


Lupinicity

by give_it_a_little_nudge



Series: Caniformes [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: ALL THE KINKS, Alpha Castiel (Supernatural), Alpha Dean Winchester, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, BAMF Castiel (Supernatural), Bottom Dean Winchester, Castiel does not split infinitives, Claiming, Claiming Bites, Cultural Incest, Dom Castiel (Supernatural), Dom/sub, Domestic, Domestic Discipline, Double Penetration, DubCon exhibitionist elements, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, Except panty / Feminization, Exhibitionist Dean Winchester, F/F, F/M, Face Slapping, Hair-pulling, Impact Play, Kid Fic, Kids see everything, M/M, Male Lactation, Male maternity, Manipulation, Masochism, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Multi, No PantyKink, Not my thing, Polyamorous Pack, Polyamory, Punishment, Raising Pups, Raising a family, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sadism, Sex and punishments at home are pretty damned public, Sex as Therapy, Spanking, Strapping, Sub Dean Winchester, Team Dean Winchester's Red Ass, Three gender designations, Top Castiel (Supernatural), True Mates, Voyeurism, Wolf Pack, super long chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-13 10:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 329,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21492721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/give_it_a_little_nudge/pseuds/give_it_a_little_nudge
Summary: Building a society out of the ashes of what they'd so recklessly torn down was no easy feat, but the wolves had a champion now, a bright powerful Alpha with a new Pack and everything to gain, everything to lose.  Castiel's vision hadn't dimmed, but the desperate pull in so many directions was a weight that even his strong shoulders might falter under.  No mortal human could possibly achieve what he planned, not alone anyway.  But Castiel wasn't alone.  His husband Dean stood staunchly at his side, their hard won Pack fanning out behind them, and every member a warrior in their own right.  The focus of their lives was shifting from the macro, from legislation and training centers, to the micro, to midnight diaper changes and an ever-shifting internal Pack dynamic.  If Cas and Dean could prove to the world that they could model what they preached and make it work, then there was hope for a sustainable future for the whole species.  If not... But failing was not an option, not when so many wolves depended upon the flagship Pack to forge a path for an entire species.
Relationships: Castiel (Supernatural)/Original Female Character(s), Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gabriel/Kali (Supernatural), Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Michael/Dean Winchester, Michael/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Caniformes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1366237
Comments: 828
Kudos: 177





	1. Wednesday, August 22, 2018

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the next phase of the Winchester Pack chronicles. I feel like I should have something profound to say, but I'll have to get back to you on that, as my mind is completely blank.
> 
> Just like the previous work in this series, this story is intended as an episodic tale. The chapters are long. Each is intended to feel much like an episode of an ongoing serial tv show (one that isn't ending after a mere 15 seasons). If you haven't read Caniformes, Lupinicity is going to be confusing as hell.
> 
> And as a quick reminder, although I'm likely preaching to the choir at this point, this story is rapey and spanky. Those are core elements. Read at your own recognizance.
> 
> Much thanks to [Jennyfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennyfly/pseuds/jennyfly) for the collage and the gallons and gallons of support juice. We're talking buckets, people.

“Finish up, sunshine. We leave in twenty minutes.”

“Cain, help me. I can’t decide what to wear. I can’t pack everything. Cas limited me to two bags. I can’t wear any of this stuff!” April’s shoulders slumped in defeat, a brightly colored sundress trailing the ground from each hand.

Cain frowned and abandoned the doorway where he’d meant to stop in briefly on his way down to check in with the Alpha. He sighed and pressed his lips together. There were clothes strewn everywhere. “Did you ask Michael to help you?” he checked with his chin lowered carefully. “Kiddo, your bags were packed this morning. What happened? What is all this?” She smelled off. Clearly, she wasn’t suffering a bout of indecision. This was far deeper.

Tears welled in her eyes from nowhere. “I went looking for my makeup kit, and once I had it all out on my bed, I got to looking at it, and it’s all wrong for New York. I can’t wear this, alpha! I don’t know what I was thinking! I’m going to be a laughing stock! They’re going to think I’m a hick! I can’t do this, Cain! Fuck! What was I thinking?! What was I thinking?! I can’t go to NEW YORK!!”

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, hold up there.” Cain wrapped his arms tightly around her, and she immediately went lax in his embrace, trusting him to hold her. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay. Put the dresses on the bed. Come with me. Let’s get you some help.” He carefully extracted the wrinkled folds of fabric from her claws and tossed them both across the bed before walking her out to the staircase, whispering all the way. April leaned into him and sobbed piteously, wetting his blue oxford at the shoulder.

“What the hell’d you do to her?” Dean accused rashly as he topped the final step on his way up. “What’s wrong, kid? C’mere.” Dean took her in hand straight from Cain’s supportive grasp, and he put distance between them immediately, escorting the Omega in the opposite direction, back the way they’d come from. He sat her on a padded bench in the hallway and attacked her tearstained cheeks with a handkerchief he produced from his pocket. “Whatcha crying for? What did the mean alpha say to you this time?”

Cain rolled his eyes. “She’s spiraling, Dean. She needs her mate. Sitting in the hallway isn’t going to help anything.”

“I’ll take it from here, thanks,” Dean muttered without looking up at him. “You’ve done enough. You can go now.”

“Dean, she needs Castiel, not a sympathetic ear.”

“I said, you’re _dismissed,_” Dean snapped. “Don’t you have things you need to be doing?”

Cain set his feet and crossed his arms. Dean could feel a tug at his navel, and he growled deep in his throat at the presumption. Cain’s Claim wasn’t powerful enough to compel Dean, but it could skew a less than stout commitment. “What I need to be doing,” he reminded Dean, “Is finalizing preparations and seeing to my client’s welfare. Everything is in readiness except April. So, no. There isn’t anywhere else I need to be at the moment.”

“She needs _Pack_ right now, _alpha._ Not a manager. You have five seconds to make yourself scarce.” Dean imbued his words with as much disdain as he could get into them, and he flashed red eyes up at the contemptuous upstart hovering above him.

“You’re not helping, alpha,” Cain replied, unruffled. “April requires calm heads and a de-escalation of tensions, not a throw-down between posturing knotheads. I respectfully suggest that we do this some other time; maybe some time that we’re not limited by a departure schedule? I am…as I’ve reminded you multiple times already…entirely at your service if you feel the need to test your red eyes against mine. But right now is arguably not the best moment.”

“Five,” Dean muttered to himself with certainty. He kissed the top of April’s head and eased himself out from beneath her, standing to his full stature and making use of his powerful stance. Cain sighed.

“Four.”

“Dean?” Castiel interrupted as he rounded the corner from the nursery. “What’s going on?” The Alpha sized up the situation nearly instantly, and realized his mate was dead center of what was gearing up to be a bloodbath. “Step away! Right now!” Cas hurried between the alphas and stooped to kneel in front of April, placing his hands on her knee, on her cheek. She shuddered and closed her eyes, leaning her face into his touch and shifting forward into his personal space. Cas cradled her, rotating to sit beside her and tuck her close. His eyes blazed up at his husband. “What is this?!”

“Ask him,” Dean replied coldly, nodding toward Cain. “He had her in tears.”

“Kitten, are you all right? What’s the matter, baby?” Cas gentled as he turned to inspect his mate’s face. She sniffled and buried her face in his chest mutely.

“Explain,” the Alpha commanded, rounding on his alphas as he coddled her trembling figure.

“We were on our way to you, straightaway,” Cain said disdainfully. “But Winchester waylaid us so he could protect her from the big bad interloper. Sir, she’s spiraling, and her suitcases are no longer packed. Someone needs to see to both of those issues, as I believe we are schedule to leave in another ten or fifteen minutes. If you’ll excuse me, I can go see about getting her luggage squared away. I leave her in your hands, sir.”

Castiel stared at him in surprise before taking hold of himself and nodding curtly. Cain returned the nod and reversed course, disappearing into April’s room at the top of the stairs and closing the door behind him rather sharply. To the side, Dean’s chest still heaved and his jaw worked soundlessly. He was staring furiously at a spot on the carpet about five feet in front of him as if trying to burn a hole through to the bare floorboards underneath.

“We can’t keep on like this, Dean. You have to do something about it.”

“I’m _trying_,” Dean asserted without lifting his eyes. His face flushed pink at the criticism. “But he’s always got a frikken excuse. It’s this damned Claim, man. I can’t get a handle on a confrontation. It’s like my mind is praying for an out even when I’m doing my damnedest to throw it down. All he has to do is come up with one lame excuse, and I jump on it like a life raft.”

Cas chuckled and cinched his mate in tighter.

“It’s not funny, C.J. He’s taking advantage, and you’re the one who let him get one over on me in the first place. This is your fault, you know.”

The humor disappeared from Castiel’s eyes, and he cleared his throat meaningfully. Dean’s eyes popped up to meet his Dom’s. “We’ve discussed this, Pet. Cain would not have had any chance to Claim you if you hadn’t played the game you played. I’ve warned you about playing with fire. Little boys who light matches sometimes get burned.”

Dean glared fiercely.

“Or am I missing something?” Castiel challenged. “Care to enlighten me?”

Dean looked away.

“Hsst!” Cas hissed, making both Subs jump. “Eyes on me, Pet. Answer me.”

Dean brought his focus back to his husband’s face, but the petulance remained. He chewed on every explanation his mind spun out to him, but none of them would do. Castiel wasn’t in a mood to suffer whining. They had indeed discussed Cain’s Claim already. In depth. Exhaustively. Dean wasn’t getting any sympathy about the situation. He could feel the flush spread downward from his face to cover the rest of his body. His fingers twitched with a need to fidget, but that wouldn’t go over either.

And April needed her mate’s full attention.

“Nosir,” Dean admitted reluctantly. “You didn’t miss anything.”

“Good,” Cas told him firmly. He stood carefully, bringing April to her feet as well before sweeping her up into his arms, cradled close to his chest. “Then may I rely on you to see to this untenable situation _poste haste?_ I won’t ask the Pack to ride cramped on a coach together with this level of tension between my alphas. Handle it before we depart, Dean, or one of you stays home.”

“Sir, you can’t _ground_ me.”

Castiel cleared his throat again. “Can’t I?”

Dean grumbled but stood firm. “There isn’t time to get settled before the bus pulls out, Sir. We can’t half-ass it if we expect it to stick.”

Cas nodded in agreement. “I’m drawing back our departure time. April needs more than a simple Release. Her scent is wildly off-center at the moment. I will need to knot her, and that buys you time as well.”

“Fantastic,” Dean grumbled. “All the time in the world.”

“It’s sufficient unless you take your brat into the confrontation instead of your alpha,” Cas told him. “I suggest you stop showing out for me and go take care of business. I’m not paving your way for you, _alpha._ You’re either doing this on your own or you’re going to concede your position as second in command.”

“Wha…showing…? Paving…?” Dean sputtered. “What the fuck? You would put him over me in rank?!”

Castiel hardened his voice and leaned in close to Dean’s left ear. “Only if you force me to, Dean. Don’t make me choose between you. I cannot give this to you. You must earn it. Your alpha is miles above his, Claim-bond or no. I know you can do this, and I’m weary of waiting.”

“Alpha, _please,_” April whined into his collarbone, and Cas made soothing shushing noises into her ear, rubbing her back.

“Yes, Omega. I’m here. We’re going.”

Dean fumed.

“And Dean?” Cas added. “Once it’s done, the provocations stop. You hear me? It was bothersome when it was nonstop between you and Cain, but now that it’s interfering with my mate, my foot is down. It stops.”

Dean huffed a heavy sigh.

“I expect an answer, alpha,” Cas reminded him.

“Yes. Sir.”

Castiel nodded imperiously and then descended the stairs at a jog with his mate in his arms, their heads close together. Dean could feel Cas’ focus and temperament shift from irritated to concerned, and he frowned at the floor again.

It was an ultimatum with multiple repercussions, and Dean resented the heavy strokes even as he knew that an order from his Top was precisely what he’d been waiting for, what he needed. He needed permission, of all things.

What kind of alpha needs permission to _be_ alpha?

A Submissive one, he decided. Dean scrubbed the back of one calf with the top of his alternate foot, and he thought. He ran through it feverishly in his head. Cas had called him on his posturing. All the stupid confrontations? Yeah, that was aimed at Cas, not Cain; even if it felt good to bust the asshole’s chops again and again. He was busted there. It really had nothing to do with setting a hierarchy between Pack alphas and everything to do with acting like a brat in front of someone who had no patience for it.

But the truth remained, Dean was never going to roll the man until he stopped playing brat games and faced it like he meant it…like Castiel would do.

WWCD.

Dean sighed.

Interrupting Cain’s trek to get April to her mate had been a douche move. Dean knew that when he did it. But the feeling of outrage was nearly insurmountable every time he confronted Cain and his stupid silver mane. Seeing him curled protectively around April was a step further than Dean could stomach, and he’d let his gut lead him. Only, his gut led him wrong. It led him to throw a foot out and trip them up when April desperately needed Castiel. It led him to fling unsupported accusations at a man who had shown nothing but careful attentive consideration toward the Ozzie from day one.

Dean’s instincts had never been this discombobulated before.

It had to be that damned Claim-bond that Castiel had stood aside and allowed the asshole to place, heavenly as it had felt at the time. It was fucking Dean right up now that he needed to throw it off. It was another layer of security to Dean’s wolf, and the bastard had turned brat on his own self in order to hold onto it.

[We don’t need another Claim, you prick,] Dean thought viciously at his own wolf. [Two psychopaths are enough even for you. Don’t be a fucking glutton. Some of us have to live with this mess you’re making.]

Dean got a dismissive shrug in response, and he smacked the wolf putatively on its rump before closing its kennel door with a resounding clang. Dean rarely did that to his wolf, finding that its insight was usually a welcome part of Dean’s interactions with other Lupins. But the last thing he needed right now was a rout by the brat that could lead him to lose his rank.

Sam would never let him live it down. And Cas. Cas would be devastated. Cas was depending on Dean to pull it together and get this right.

Jesus, but the silver-haired alpha punched every one of Dean’s brat buttons.

April’s bedroom door cracked open while Dean was still facing it deep in thought. Cain swung it wide with a suitcase in one hand and another set beside him. He looked up and startled when he found Dean staring coldly right through him.

“I see,” he said into the stilted silence. “Bee in your bonnet, Winchester?”

“You’re no Submissive,” Dean accused.

Cain chuckled and set the suitcase on the floor in the hall. “All my test results say I am,” he countered calmly. “I don’t see the relevance.”

“You can’t have him,” Dean replied, carrying on a conversation that the other man wasn’t privy to.

“I’m not pursuing him,” Cain replied, still infuriatingly calm. He reached back and hoisted the other suitcase out into the hall with its matched mate and closed the door behind him. “It may perplex you to hear this, Dean, but not every man is attracted to the same ones you are.”

“Don’t lie to me, alpha. I can smell you.”

Cain sighed. “I’m human, Dean. He’s _Alpha._ My body’s responses are not something I control. That doesn’t mean I’m looking for weaknesses so I can steal him from you. I assure you I have no designs on your husband _or_ your mate. And I much suspect that that isn’t what this is about anyway.”

“Is that so?” Dean spat back. “What’s it about then?”

Cain tilted his head as he regarded Dean and selected his words carefully. “I find it interesting that you led, not with a warning to keep my paws off your Claims, but with an accusation that I misrepresent my designation. Therein lies the tell, perhaps. Is it my public face that so irks you, Dean? Is it my refusal to flaunt my Submissive side, so out of line with your approach, that is such an annoyance to you? I don’t begrudge you your spectacle, alpha. I simply prefer a more private route.”

Dean scoffed. “You do you, man. I don’t care. Just don’t…” Dean stopped abruptly and blushed.

“Don’t what?” Cain prodded, stepping a little closer. Dean growled real menace at him and was pleased when the alpha froze in his tracks. Cain’s mouth fell open slightly, and his pupils dilated. Dean could smell arousal in the air, and it wasn’t his own.

“Don’t judge me,” Dean whispered. His voice was soft, but there was iron behind it. He could feel the telltale warmth of his eyes shifting to red. His nostrils flared.

“Judge you?” Cain asked in dismay. “Dean…”

“Stop saying my name!” Dean hissed.

Cain’s palms came up between them, beseeching. “You misunderstand, alpha. I don’t judge you. You’re not like everyone else. You’re vulnerable and soft at the same time as you’re fierce and powerful. I can’t begin to mimic that. My wolf…he’s…he’s not half what yours is. He’s dull and lifeless compared to yours. I’m not judging you, Dean. I’m _jealous!_”

“WHAT?!”

Cain sighed and dropped his hands. He shook his head and turned his back, facing the door and carding fingers through his own hair. The silver locks parted and flowed back together under his touch. He turned back to face Dean, and slowly, he sank to his knees. Dean’s face registered base disgust, and he backed rapidly up three or four steps, seeking distance.

Cain lowered his eyes.

Dean stared at him in horror.

“Stop it!” he commanded.

Cain breathed an exhale out through his mouth and then looked up, his expression deadly serious. “I pledge you my fealty…”

“STOP IT! Get up! What the fuck are you doing?!”

“…in all that you may require of me.”

“I’m not even kidding, man. Get up! I’m not accepting a damn pledge from you. You have my wolf on a fucking _leash!_” Dean was aghast. Hierarchies did not work this way.

“I will faithfully execute your commands…” Cain continued, unswayed, and Dean felt a bubble of outrage forcing its way from his gut to his heart.

“I swear to god, you asshole…”

“…to the best of my abilities…”

Dean tackled him sideways without warning, and bowled April’s suitcase hard into the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster. “I said knock it off! It doesn’t work like that!”

Dean pinned the man beneath him, prone on the floor, with a hand between Cain’s shoulder blades. They both fell silent, both panting. Cain didn’t struggle. He turned his head to the side and closed his eyes. His feet pulled wider apart on the floor. Dean sat atop his hips, staring down at him.

“Fight me, damn you,” he said quietly with a chill in his voice.

“No,” Cain replied, his calm back in place.

“It won’t hold if you don’t make me _take_ it,” Dean countered. His voice straddled the line between reason and insanity, and he had no idea which part of him was in control.

“Good,” Cain said in an infuriatingly solid voice. His eyes squeezed tightly shut. His voice might be calm, but there was a riptide under the surface that he was riding… Where was it taking him? Dean began to struggle to catch his own breath. His palm remained flexed across Cain’s back, his nails digging into the man’s flesh.

Dean’s mind whirled. His cock hardened. He leaned forward to bring his lips close to Cain’s ear, and he rolled his hips into Cain’s ass, stroking himself in the exchange. Cain’s breath caught.

“I won’t do it,” Dean breathed into his ear. “I’m not your sex toy. I’m not your Dominant. You can’t have me either, _Submissive._ I belong to Michael and to Cas. My dance card’s full, asshole.”

Cain whined, and Dean’s cock responded to the sound of need and arousal.

“Dean, please. I don’t need a Dom. I need…”

“An alpha?” Dean finished for him.

Cain’s lips sealed. He didn’t answer.

“You fucking _Claimed_ my ass, Darius Cain. If you didn’t want it, you should’ve kept your dick in your pants. Now you can live with it.”

“Alpha, please,” Cain begged. He rocked his hips a little to remind Dean what was on offer, but Dean pushed himself back up to sitting.

“No. You made your bed. You can sleep in it.” Dean waited another infinite moment before shoving himself up to his feet and stepping clear. His dick wept the loss, but an alpha, even a Submissive one, had some pride, and Dean was no one’s toy.

Okay, that wasn’t true, exactly. Dean was someone’s toy. But not Cain’s. Damn these newfangled designation jumpers. Cain’s Tertiary looked for Domination from a Secondary? It was fucked up and beyond complicated, and Dean’s head was spinning with the implications even as his front-brain told him to expect a whole new set of research subjects to hit the labs.

Dean scrubbed his thumbs across his eyes, and it was that momentary blindness that allowed Cain to get the jump on him. The two of them went flying the breadth of the hallway to crash violently into the bench on the far wall. The bench cracked with a sickening sound, and it sagged sadly without shattering. Cain was all teeth and fists and fury, but Dean wasn’t having it. He’d waited long enough for this, and no manipulative douchewad was going to Claim his ass in his own home under his own roof.

…Not twice, anyway.

Dean dodged Cain’s fists like the street-fighter he was raised to be, a hard glint in his crimson eyes. He let Cain tire himself a bit without ever landing a blow, and then he systematically shifted one pound of bodyweight at a time, one calculated move after another, until the silver-haired alpha was trapped beneath him again.

Cain was sweating and struggling, but Dean felt decidedly calm. Once they both realized there was no contest between them, would never be a contest between them, Dean sat upright across Cain’s ass again, exactly as he had done before, but this time was very different.

Cain snarled and slobbered against the floor, incensed, outmatched, embarrassed.

Dean watched him coldly and then stood, straddling his Packmate’s knees with his feet.

“Get up,” he demanded.

“Make me,” Cain spat back.

“What happened to ‘I swear to you my fealty’?” Dean teased brutally. “Didn’t you mean it?”

“Fuck you!” Cain said over his own shoulder.

Dean could feel Michael approaching from the first floor, but he didn’t balk at all. “Oh, no, I think that’s all done with,” Dean told his adversary reasonably. “I hope you enjoyed your taste of this sweet ass, because it’s the last you’re gonna get. Get up.”

Dean stepped clear as Cain struggled sadly to his feet. Michael stopped at the upper landing, watching, admiring, drooling a little.

“Slacks down at your ankles,” Dean instructed. “Lean down onto the bench you broke. Stick your ass out.”

The look on Cain’s face could’ve frozen a river at full flood, but Dean’s was colder. “Do it. Now.”

The air crackled between them, so much tension in the space between their bodies, that it was nearly visible. Cain turned his back on the superior alpha and followed his instructions. In short order, his ass was bare and presented, and Dean paused to lower his own pants just enough to free his erection.

“You need to spit on yourself, alpha,” Michael advised helpfully. “Just a touch of moisture is more painful than none at all because it’ll let you fuck deeper.”

“Michael, shut the fuck up,” Dean gritted between clenched teeth, but his mate was right. Dean worked up a rolling dollop of spit in his mouth and surreptitiously let it drop straight down onto his hard length. He used his hand to smear it evenly over his whole cock. He could smell Michael’s slick even at this distance. It was rich and enticing and copious. Dean spared him a quick glance. Their eyes met, and Michael winked. Dean smirked back.

“Ass out,” he instructed, addressing Cain again. “You wanted it this way, you got it. I’m not going to pin you, hold you, bind you, or impede you in any way. You get me, alpha? You’re free to make a break for it any time you feel like you can’t take it. But if you stay, then we’re doing this. And I plan to make it hurt.”

Dean positioned the head of his cock at Cain’s anus, and he pressed forward enough to test the give. There wasn’t any give. Every muscle was clamped tight. Dean splayed his fingers against the wall for support, and he stopped pushing, allowing the tension to hold right at that point.

“It’s going to hurt, alpha,” he whispered. “And you’re going to release that Claim you hold over me whether you want to or not. Because _no one_ Claims this alpha against his will and walks away from it.”

Cain’s breathing was turning ragged. His head fell forward to hang sadly chin to chest. “Just do it,” he begged.

“No one,” Dean went on, applying the barest bit more pressure to the tightness at the head of his cock and pulling a high whine out of the man in front of him. “Gets the better of me and lives to walk away from it unless I consent to it. And I don’t _consent_ to your Claim, Darius Cain. Take it back.”

“I…take it…back,” Cain whimpered.

_”TAKE IT BACK!!!_ Dean shouted as he thrust forward and breached Cain’s clenched hole in one hard push.

“I GIVE!!” Cain screamed.

_”Damn right you do!!”_ Dean huffed. “This is MY house!” Dean pulled back and thrust back in. “My PACK! MY _ALPHA!!_ MY OMEGAS!!” He fucked furiously to match his words, and the keening wail from the conquered man beneath him nearly drowned his voice completely. Dean could still feel Cain slightly through the Claim that Cain had set, and he pistoned his hips in a desperate attempt to erase and replace that link. “You’ll do as you’re told from now on, and you’ll keep your filthy eyes off my mate, off my husband, off me, for fuck’s sake!”

“I WILL! I PROMISE!” Cain shouted as his body jolted forward and back, as the sound of slapping skin echoed down the long hallway.

“You’ll go up to The Facility, and you’ll get your own alpha to scene with, and you’ll stay out of my foursome! Your dick better not breach anyone’s body _in this whole Pack_ but April’s. Do you hear me, alpha??” Dean was up on the balls of his feet, pummeling his hips into his Packmate’s as furiously as he could, pulling bruises in Cain’s shoulder and leaving a sweaty handprint on the wall.

“Yes,” Cain managed between cries of pain. “I prom…ise.”

“What was that?” Dean prompted, freezing in place with his dick buried to the knot.

“Yes, Sir,” Cain breathed out. “Sir,” he repeated.

Dean pressed hard and his knot popped past Cain’s tight rim. Cain threw silver hair everywhere as he writhed and screamed in pain, his knees buckling for a moment before locking again.

“You crave that, don’t you, alpha?” Dean asked carefully right into his ear, too soft for Michael to hear. “You need an alpha knot?”

Cain trembled, but he didn’t answer.

“Well, you’re not getting mine,” he said with brutal coldness as he pulled his knot free again. “Do we understand each other now?”

Cain nodded into his braced arm, his every line, every muscle, screaming surrender. Dean judged him primed, and he fucked into him powerfully, turning his alpha impulses loose, feeling the hot flow of a Claim coursing through his veins, down his arms and legs, into his belly and his groin, and the feeling was exquisite and bestial. Everything exploded in tandem. Dean pulled himself free of Cain’s ruined hole, and he painted his come across the man’s lower back as his Claim slammed into place like a slap across an unwary cheek that sends the victim sprawling.

Cain cried out and collapsed to his knees, clutching at his head. His own Claim evaporated into metaphysical mist, and a far more substantial one locked him into place on his knees. There was no air down there, and he gasped in panic. He tried to suck in a breath, but nothing happened. He slid sideways to sit gracelessly on his hip and cast a terrified look upward.

Dean didn’t let him suffer. He went down on one knee, hovering tightly over Cain’s body, bringing him body heat and alpha musk. He put a grounding hand on the back of Cain’s neck.

“Breathe, alpha,” he instructed, and Cain’s throat rattled painfully as he gulped air. “That’s it. Slow it down. Breathe for me. I’ve got you.”

Cain took no more than a few breaths to find his rhythm again and get himself back together. He held tightly to Dean’s hand, and he nodded firmly.

“Give it a minute,” Dean advised. “It’s going to hurt like hell when you stand up. Don’t rush it.”

“I’m all right,” Cain braved. “I know what to expect. I’m no virgin, Dean.”

“Your funeral.” Dean stood up and hoisted Cain to his feet then pressed supportive hands across his ribs. “Take a minute though, man. I ain’t asking. Don’t go anywhere until I’m sure you’re not going to collapse on me.”

“I’m not going to pass out, Dean,” Cain protested in offense. Dean cleared his throat, fixed his hard gaze on Cain’s face, and gave an unsubtle tug to the Claim-link. Cain chuckled at the reversal of roles and then groaned and shot a hand out to brace himself on the wall.

“You see? Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

“I usually have to take a knot to feel this inside out,” Cain admitted. “And not a tease of a knot like you did, you asshole, but a fully-locked, no-one’s-going-anywhere-until-this-fucker-deflates knot. Cripes! That aches!”

“You’re welcome,” Dean added sourly. “Think you can sit?”

“Yeaah,” Cain assured him, eyeing the bench warily. “Maybe…just…” Dean began to lower him down, and Cain transferred his shaky arm from the wall to the feebly angled bench. “Careful…” he warned.

“Lean forward and put your weight on your thighs. Lift your core off the seat. Center of gravity forward. There you go. Easy does it.” Dean eased him down and urged him to lean forward, balanced over his knees and feet. “How do you feel? Dizzy at all? Think there’s any tearing? You prone to Sub-drop?”

Cain chuckled again and dropped his head to his knees. “No drop, alpha. I’m okay. I swear. I need to go clean up and get dressed. My back is dripping onto the cushion.”

“Dude, the bench is toast anyway. No one gives a fuck about jizz on the cushion. I’m surprised it’s holding you at all.”

“What?” Cain nearly stood back up, but Dean held him.

“But it is, so sit tight for a bit until I’m sure you’re all right. Go really still in your head, alpha. I’m gonna dig around. Check you out. Don’t block me.”

“I’ll take the bags downstairs, Dean,” Michael told him. “I’ll send Cas up. He’ll wanna do a quick exam before we go.”

“Thanks, Michael. Check for him in the playroom. He may be tied up for a while, but you can check.”

Michael took one suitcase in each hand and hauled them down the stairs as Dean settled on his knees between Cain’s thighs. “Open up to me, man,” he reminded Cain. Their eyes locked, Dean’s full red and Cain’s brilliant blue.

“We got off on the wrong foot, Dean,” Cain told him softly as Dean rifled about in his head. Dean only hummed in reply, barely listening. “I was never after your fellas. You realize that, don’t you?”

“Shut up a minute, alpha,” Dean told him, searching deeper. The link wasn’t wide enough to let him see much, but he should be able to suss out a real issue if there was one.

“I didn’t have my sights on you either, Dean. Not really. I need an alpha touch sometimes. I know that’s odd, but it is what it is. I’m trusting you to keep that to yourself. This isn’t the type of thing that’ll make sense to most of our people, and I’m not ready for the nature of the fight that’ll come on its heels if it gets out.”

“I’m not going to out you, man. Now shut the fuck up. What’s this?” Dean tugged at a tangled mess of Tertiary linkage. It was knotted so tightly on itself he couldn’t tell if it was a knot or a fusion.

Cain touched his own temple. “I told you,” he said gamely. “It’s complicated.”

“Has Alpha seen that?” Dean asked him as he let it go and pulled free of Cain’s mind. Cain’s shoulders relaxed immediately.

“Castiel hasn’t Claimed me, Dean. He doesn’t have access to it.”

Dean sat back on his heels and thought it through. “Does it get in the way of your work with April?” he asked at last.

“No.”

“Then I guess it’s none of my damn business, is it?”

“I would appreciate your discretion on the matter, alpha,” Cain agreed. “Although I’m not naïve enough to think you won’t describe it to Castiel.”

“He needs to know, man. This Pack and everything in it is his responsibility.”

Cain nodded slowly. “I know. It’s not as rough as it looks, Dean. I can manage it as long as I’m scening regularly.”

“How long’s it been?” Dean asked as he pressed himself up to his feet.

“Counting just now?”

“Don’t fuck with me, alpha.” Dean took hold of Cain’s upper arms and helped him to his feet before ducking back down and helping the man with his pants. “Do you have a Top?”

Cain licked his lips. “I’ve been looking. I had an Dominant in New York. I haven’t found one here. I’ve been looking.”

“Ah, yeah, that’s a problem. We’ll get right on that when we get home. For now, you’re going to contact this Dom in New York, and you’re going to schedule an overnight scene with the dude. No argument. Do it.” Dean let Cain lean heavily on him as they descended the stairs together. “Drop Castiel’s cash if he needs an incentive to be available.”

“I don’t need money, Dean,” Cain protested. “And while we’re on the subject of you saying offensive things, I _AM_ Winchester Pack, so you can fuck off with that bullshit protection of your people.”

“What’d I say?” Dean asked innocently.

“You told me that what April needed in the middle of a downward spiral was _Pack_, not a manager. That was uncalled for.”

Dean sighed. “Yeah it was. Sorry about that. It wasn’t about you, not really.”

“It wasn’t about April either though,” Cain posited.

“Fine,” Dean conceded. “I’m a dick. Now you and Michael have something to bond over.”

“If it’s all the same to you, alpha,” Cain confided. “I’ll pass on bonding with Michael. I may be Pack, but I’m not a kumbaya joiner, and Michael is…a big ask. I’m not a masochist, Dean.”

“Ouch, I’m telling him you said that,” Dean told him in offense and defense both.

“Please do. The sooner he dislikes me, the easier it’ll be for all of us.”

“Well, then, I don’t feel like a shit for telling you that the ship’s already sailed on that, so you’re in the clear.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

They cleared the bottom step together and trudged slowly through the foyer. Fred bustled the other way and then pulled up short, stalling in his tracks with his eyes flickering from one alpha to the other before he visibly relaxed.

“At last,” he breathed. “Forgive me, alphas, but these last few months have been a trial for all of us. I congratulate you both on the resolution, and I do hope it is a satisfactory one.”

“Yeah, thanks, Fred. It’s all done but the limping. You seen Cas?”

“The Alpha is engaged downstairs with his mate. I fear the Omega was in an aggrieved state, and he’s delayed the departure of the coach until he’s seen to her appropriately. He’s asked that everyone remains close at hand and that all the luggage be stowed before he and April appear. Is there any more luggage?”

Dean replied. “Michael had the last of it, Fred. We’re gonna head down to the H/R room to get Cain cleaned up. You’ll vouch for where we are if Cas goes on a tear with his flock all spread out, won’t you?”

“Indeed, Dean. Fear not the Alpha’s temper. I’ll see to it.”

“You’re the best, Fred. I love you!” Dean steered a taciturn Cain around the back doorway and down the stairs.

“A sentiment that is warmly returned, alpha,” Fred added to the empty room.

Fred looked about him, re-setting himself to the task he was about before encountering Dean and Cain. Even a glancing blow with Dean often set him awhirl, but he had a household to oversee, and a Pack departure to manage. The phone rang. Fred angled to pick it up.

***************

Castiel wasted no time once the door slammed closed behind him. He tossed her absently onto the bed and attacked her clothes, baring her swiftly and completely. She whimpered and flipped herself onto her belly. She pressed her backside into the air up on her knees and reached back to pull her cheeks apart as slick issued copiously from her channel. Neither of them spoke a word.

Castiel crawled up behind her and buried his face in her channel, digging in as far as he could with his tongue. With one arm, he reached beneath her and up across her shoulder to pull her backward into his face. With his other, he squeezed her thigh tight enough to hurt, and he moaned at the scent and the feel and the taste of her. Cas lapped and licked into her until his tongue began to tire, and then he rose to his height on his knees behind her and slapped her ass hard with his bare hand. No warning.

April hissed and pressed backward with both hands pressed into the mattress. Cas growled and struck her again. Her flesh pinked rapidly as he applied himself wholeheartedly to his work, and April Released explosively.

Cas lost himself in the simple pleasure of making his mate hurt long after her Omega no longer needed him to. This wasn’t for the Omega. It was about Cas and his Submissive, a man and his mate, an intimacy so tightly enmeshed in his very being that it was essentially an act of masturbation. He wanted her hurting, aching, throbbing, and he wanted to hit her. The sweet visceral, tactile pleasure of his hand whacking the meaty firmness of her backside hadn’t grown old yet. He prayed it never would. It was a bliss akin to the first bite of a perfectly rare steak, but far more sustainable. Like Dean, Cas sometimes felt like he might orgasm from the eroticism itself of watching his hand and his mate’s ass turn red together.

And she not only allowed it, she lived for it. Castiel could tell that his eyes had reddened. He could feel the thumping rhythm of his own heart at pace with his mate’s, and he let it go, forgetting to catalogue anything, ignoring the subtle and overt signals from his Sub that he always kept careful watch over when he scened with Dean. Here in this moment, alone with his mate, he and she were one, Alpha and Omega, and they tempered one another the way the Universe intended, through their bond. Limits were as self-regulating as the jerk of a hand from a hot stove. He _couldn’t_ press her beyond her limits, even if he’d wanted to. Their bond turned a mutuality into a singularity. Her pain pulsed through his body, and his wild arousal thrummed inside of her.

All at once, he reached his tipping point, and he roared as he pressed his still clothed groin up against her willing orifices. A baffled Omega glanced back at him as the Alpha looked down and struggled to comprehend the encumbrance. He shook his head like a wet dog and impatiently attacked the fastenings to his pants. He shoved his pants and underwear to his knees hurriedly, freeing himself.

Why did people insist so vehemently on wearing clothes all the damn time?

Castiel draped himself over her back and let his body do whatever it would do. He didn’t deliberate upon which hole to aim for. Such intention was beyond him. He sank into warm, wet welcome, the softer of the two options, more cradling than embracing, and he felt perfect soul-affirming rightness. He whined high in his throat. She echoed right back at him and pressed back into his thrusts.

“Let it all go, Kitten,” he instructed far more calmly than he felt. “I’ve got you. Dissolve right into me, and I’ll piece you back together. Let go, baby.”

She cried out, clutching the linens in her fists, and threw herself bodily right into the maelstrom in her head. It caught her midair, lifted her, ravaged her, pummeled her until she couldn’t see or think or breathe or want, and she flew apart as each molecule that made her whole was wrenched in a different direction, every nerve unraveled, every muscle undone. She screamed as she climaxed, and her brain exploded in relief.

Her Alpha’s knot locked, and he filled her with his seed and bit down on the back of her neck. It hurt. Oh, how it hurt. April watched with her eyes squeezed shut as every molecule that comprised her whirled into the edges of the Universe to vibrate and spin far from anyone’s reach, only to slow, to pause, to linger in space so very far away, and then to glisten and vibrate with renewed energy and speed at the beckon of something outside of her own power, to wing back from every direction. She felt concussed by the violence of the collision in her psyches of every separate strand finding her once again and re-fusing into place as if they’d never abandoned her at all, and it was Castiel who knit each morsel back together.

His Claim rocked them both, and his embrace, both physical and spiritual, held her fast to the bed. She was weeping from the power of her relief. She struggled to catch her breath, but the Alpha paced her carefully, guiding her inhales and her exhales until she could hold the rhythm once again on her own. Half-moon divots from his blunt nails marked her upper arms where his strong arms had wrapped around her bodily. She trembled. He kissed the back of her neck. He murmured comfort. He whispered adoration and pride.

He rolled her to her side to spoon her protectively. She reached up to clutch at his hands, and he let her intertwine their fingers. She could feel him smile into the back of her neck.

“So good for me,” he whispered. “Feel better?”

“Mm,” she answered cryptically.

“Mm,” he agreed, pumping his hips gently. His knot wouldn’t hold long. Her vaginal muscles didn’t have the same hold that anal ones do. She was softer and easier in her feminine aspects than in her uniquely Omega anatomy. Warm, not hot. Welcoming, but not constricting.

Castiel examined her mind internally, and she reached back through to reciprocate, earning a soft chuckle from her mate. “We both needed that,” he agreed quietly. “It’s going to be a long drive to New York and a long and arduous experience for all of us; for you most of all. You’ll let us know if you feel off-kilter again, won’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

April raised his right hand to her lips and kissed his knuckle. “I will, Alpha. Although I expect you’ll catch it before I do out there amongst all those strangers. You’ll be watching my every move.”

“Hm,” he fussed. “I don’t mean to hover, Kitten. I can’t help it. I worry about you, even with Cain right at your shoulder.”

She grinned into her pillow, aware that he could feel what he couldn’t see. “Between you and Cain, Michael, Dean, Sam, and Gabriel, I can’t imagine I’m going to take a single step without someone holding my hand steady.”

“Kitten, you’re too important to all of us to take any chances.”

“Thanks, Alpha. I love you too.”

He chuckled and nuzzled his nose across the red mark his teeth had left at the knob of her spine. “As soon as we’re untied, we need to get washed up and on that coach. We’re late leaving now, and I don’t want the driver to try to make up the time by speeding.” He sighed a long and contented exhale, sounding very close to nodding off.

“Cas, would you do me a favor when we’re in New York?”

“Hmm? What’s that?” he asked, intrigued and sleepy.

“Would you…?”

“Kitten?” He lifted up on his elbow behind her and tested the give of his knot with a gentle tug of his hips. Not yet.

She rolled back enough to look at him. His hand cradled her chin, a soppy expression of warmth in his blue eyes. “I want you to take Dean to New York on this trip. I want you to enjoy the city with your husband. I’ll be fine, Alpha. Dean needs you right now in a way that I don’t.”

A wrinkle blossomed in the space between Castiel’s eyes. He swallowed and raised himself a little higher to face her better, and he opened his mouth to question. April put a manicured finger over his lips, forestalling him.

“I’ll be busy, Cas. I have so much to accomplish, so many people to work with, so many connections to make. I need you to hand me over to Cain and Nick and give me enough room to practice being me without you at my heels. And, sweetheart, Dean needs just the opposite. You see it, don’t you? Are you hurt? I don’t mean to hurt you.”

Cas pressed his lips together and then leaned down to drop a soft kiss to her jaw, trailing it up to her ear and then to the richly scented space behind her ear where her personal smell was the deepest. He nuzzled her there with his nose and his lips.

“I’m not hurt, love. I understand. We’re beginning to see everything that we’ve been working toward come to fruition, you and I. This is who we are, Kitten. I need you as if you were a part of my own body, as you need me. But we need space apart just as desperately. You have a professional life of your own to chase, and it doesn’t have a place in it for me. I’m no more than an observer to your journey out in the world. Love, that’s all right. That’s where we’ve been heading. I knew it in my head all along. And you did too, didn’t you? You have all the resources I know how to give you now. You don’t need me for that, and I won’t get in your way. I have, as you say, other distractions to occupy myself with.”

April’s eyes locked with her mate’s, awash in fear and uncertainty. For all he said the words she’d barely dared to hope for, New York would be a test of his resolve and his commitment. She could feel that he loved and cherished her. Did he love her enough to gently nudge her away from him and out into the cold frightening world, trusting in the people he’d surrounded her with to keep up with everything he was setting aside? Could they both overcome the pull to stay close to each other? Could they stretch the elastic cord between them until it pulsated with tension and then hold there, each in their own sphere until need and obligation snapped them back together for a mutually powerful release, only to pull apart again?

“You’re thinking too hard, Kitten,” he chastised lightly, nibbling at her chin. “I won’t be far. Not ever. And you’ll have Cain and Nicholas. Most of all, April Renée, you’ll have Michael.” He huffed a breath that could’ve been amusement or irony. “Baby, I promise to focus on my husband in New York if you’ll promise to lean on Michael.”

“Cas…”

“Shh. I know. I know you’re scared. But I also know you love him. And he’s been patient, April. If you’re waiting for him to prove himself to you, don’t you think he’s done that already? He’s loyal and careful. He cares about you far more than I think you allow yourself to see.”

She frowned and laid her head on the pillow, looking blankly at the far wall. “We brought Cain in so I would have a Pack alpha to lean on.”

“It’s not the same thing, and you know it,” he chided. “Pack or not, you don’t love Cain. He serves a vital purpose, but he’s never going to be to you what Michael is. Michael would sacrifice his own life without a second thought to keep you safe. He reads your state of mind better than anyone, and he’s laser focused on taking care of you. April, please…”

“What are you asking me, Cas?”

“I want you to submit to him, Kitten. I would feel better if he held a Claim over you. I want to know he can read you directly, not just instinctively. His instincts are good, but they will be so much better once he’s got a bond to trace.”

She laughed out loud at the sudden turn of fate. They both felt the sticky flow as his knot released and his cock slid wetly out. April rolled over to face him and found his expression adamant. “Who are you, and what have you done with my mate?” she asked rhetorically.

“Look, I know I was possessive and controlling, and I threatened to tear his balls off if he flirted with you…”

“And shove them down his throat,” she reminded him, at which he had the grace to look embarrassed. He blushed prettily, and he lowered his eyes to her long elegant fingers, playing gently with them.

“It feels wrong, Castiel. I belong to you. I love Michael, but try as I might, I can’t scale this wall in front of me. I belong to you.”

“If Dean and I can do it, Kitten, then you and Michael can too. Be selfish, love. I grant you my permission and my blessing. Go get him. Make him yours. Be his. If you meant what you said about needing me to step back while you’re out building and creating and working, Kitten, you have so much to share with someone you love. There is no one on earth that I would rather see you share your life with than Michael.”

“It’s not your decision, Alpha,” she told him firmly, rankling at the sudden and unexpected all in from her mate. “Just because it’s an easy fix doesn’t mean it’s what I want. Why does everyone feel the need to pressure me all the time? When do I get to make my own choices? What if I’m not ready for a Claim from Michael? What if I never want that?”

“April. Kitten. If you ask me to, I will desist and say not one more word on the subject. Love Michael or don’t. It’s your choice. But don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Don’t reject him simply because you feel pressured to accept him, not if he’s who you truly love. And love? I think you do.”

“Quit poking into my head!” she protested weakly.

He laughed softly and kissed her lips. It was an easy, chaste kiss. Soft. Brief. Meaningful. His deep blue eyes were impossible to dodge. “Omega, when we Mated, we committed to bring our best selves into this union. I cannot give you my best self if my husband is not a part of what I bring to you. I need him to fulfill myself. And I owe you a fulfilled me. Yes?”

She pulled a pained face and took her hands out of his grasp, but he captured them right back.

“Yes?” he repeated more firmly, imbuing his word with a touch of Dominance. “Your words, April Renée, not mine.”

“It’s not the same thing, Castiel.”

“Yes, it is. It’s exactly the same thing. You are not fulfilled with only me as an intimate. I cannot comprehend, much less commiserate in, the parts of you that reach in opposite directions from me and my designations. You need Michael. And what’s more, you love him desperately. I won’t brook any lies from you, Kitten. You love him. Please, for the love of god, go get him. Stop playing around with the idea and reel him in.”

“I thought we were running late,” she deflected. “We should clean up.”

“April.” Castiel didn’t hesitate to put his voice into a register that would hold her fast. “You have a great deal at stake in New York. I know that. Your focus belongs on your work. Many, many people are depending on what you’ve created with Nick to strike the right tones for success. It’s more pressure than someone your age and background should be expected to handle. And if you tell me that you can face it best with me out of the picture, keeping my distance, baby, I can do that. But you need someone close-by; someone who’s loyalty is to you, not to your career, not to your success, but to you. Use Cain as your professional rudder, love, but use Michael as your anchor.

“If this thing you’ve built doesn’t receive the acclaim we’re all hoping for – and that’s a very real possibility – you will need someone who’s only concern is helping you through. And if it is a triumph as we all fully expect, you deserve to have someone cherished to share it with.”

“That’s you, Alpha,” she protested without conviction. “I want to share that part with you.”

“Don’t split yourself, Kitten. You’ve asked me to turn my focus to Dean while we’re away, and I can feel the resolution in your choice. When the stage lights fall and the curtain comes back down, I will be there. Wild horses won’t be able to keep me away. But, love, it’s not my embrace you will long for in that moment when the audience rises to its feet in applause. You were brave just now, and you threw all of your fear aside to pose a choice to me. Don’t pretend that you have no other goal in your sights than supporting my marriage. I can feel it as surely as I feel the rhythm of your heart beating. You’re asking me for distance, April, and I can give you that. It’s what we both need. What we both want. Don’t be afraid of it now.”

Someone pounded on the door at that moment, startling them both. April sighed and released her mate’s hand. She turned and rolled off the bed. Cas ran a hand through his hair. Was he being blindly selfish? Was he grasping at the first hint that he had the freedom to turn his face more toward his husband than his mate out of a desperate wish that it could be so?

Cas followed her out of the bed, and he clicked open the lock on the door before meeting her at the back of the room for a quick shower. He fondled the curve of her sore backside as water cascaded over them both, and he closed his eyes to Michael’s entrance.

“Everything’s loaded and ready except you two,” he said as he strolled idly into the room. “We need to get gone or we’ll fuck up our schedule. You about done here?”

“We’re finishing up now, Michael,” Cas answered with his soapy hands busy sponging the excess fluids from his mate’s body. “If you’ll help April dry off and dress, I’m right behind you. Go on, Kitten. You’re clean. Go with Michael onto the coach and get settled. I want you napping.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Michael, would you mind laying down in the back with her? Dean and I can juggle pups.”

“Um, no, sir. I don’t mind,” Michael replied, a little perplexed. “You both okay? You seem… weird.”

“We’re fine. April had a very trying fall just now, but she’s better, and she needs a nap.”

“Right. And passing her off to me is easier than doing your own aftercare.” Michael dried April off top to bottom with a fluffy towel before holding her dress open for her to shimmy into.

“It was a yes or no question, Omega,” Cas reminded him coldly. “If you’re not interested in joining April for a nap, you aren’t required to do so. Your tone and your implication are not acceptable. We have a long way to go together in a confined space. I suggest you consider what degree of personal discomfort you prefer for the journey.”

“My bad, sir. I withdraw that. Yeah, I’ll curl up in the big bed with your mate. Just don’t be too surprised if you don’t get her back right away.”

“Understood,” Cas said calmly as he dried and dressed himself. “In fact, that is rather the idea. I will let April explain.”

The coach pulled out of the gravel drive a mere five minutes later, and it wound its way to the interstate with a cargo of family, all in varying degrees of excitement, stress, and puzzlement, the ultimate Omega still mum to the confused questions from her suitor, but accommodating to his warm spooning embrace and resigned to the fact that once she’d slept, she owed him a serious discussion about a shift in dynamics.

April hadn’t expected her mate to give way that readily, to see through her that completely, and it left her feeling far less certain than she’d started that she truly wanted what she’d asked for. She had been expecting a fight. Castiel wouldn’t so easily give her over, would he? He needed her. Loved her. Craved her body and her touch. She knew he did. She had expected a fierce denial and a gnashing of teeth at the existential unfairness of a reality of split loyalties. His moral compass was predictable to a fault.

Or…it had been.

With all the wind knocked out of her sails and a host of arguments at her knee that she never had a chance to use, she was speechless and adrift.

But her gut wasn’t churning with the burn of a mate-rejection. He was still right where he belonged inside her soul, the bond between them as sure as ever. He’d agreed that what they shared was enough. They were mates but not best friends, not a couple, not married. And it stung.

Why did it sting?

The relief in her sternum was a weight lifted, a weight she hadn’t known she carried. He was still her mate. Still her Dom. Still _Alpha_, for Christ’s sake. He had agreed that he didn’t have to be her boyfriend. And he’d done it with no hesitation, really. That hadn’t even been what she asked for, but it was what she meant. He could read her well enough to know what she meant. And he’d jumped on it as if he had been trying to find the words to ask for the same thing.

But he couldn’t have done that. He was Alpha. He was obligated to provide his mate everything she might need. It had to come from April, this pushing away. Had he been waiting and praying for a chance like this?

And that didn’t even begin to touch on what the change would mean for Michael. An Alpha fully focused on Dean meant less Dean for Michael. April could see no other way. It would either free Michael to spend more time with her, or it would spark a turf war that he was going to lose miserably, catastrophically. There was no shifting one dimension of their dynamic without encroaching on others.

The elegant solution was to fill the newly emptied space in April’s life with Michael. And vice versa. Cas had spotted that immediately, and he’d shoved it forward as an inevitability. April felt twitchy with the certainty that Michael would resent the assumptions. She tried to take the weight of that argument on herself, but Cas knew better, and he’d cut that protest off at the source.

April exhaled slowly against her pillow. Chess had never been an easy game, but the stakes were higher now than they’d ever been in Oklahoma. She loved Michael. Wanted him. Was so very close to having him. But if she saw this maneuver through…

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Michael observed from behind her. “Doesn’t feel like you’re close to sleeping.”

April leaned backward against his solid body, and she rolled her head until it was nestled beneath his chin and she could gaze upward at the light dappling across the shifting ceiling. A pup’s plaintive wail echoed back from the front of the coach, followed by soothing shushing sounds in Dean’s voice that comforted the pup to silence.

“Michael, will you stay close to me?”

“Of course, Pete. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I mean for this whole trip, even once we arrive, even when it turns into a frenzy or a circus.”

Michael’s eyes grew somber, grew a golden halo, and he supported her chin with his knuckle before kissing her lips with infinite tenderness. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her solemnly.

April stretched out her feeling to trace her Mating-bond to its other end and found the Alpha entranced by his young, embraced by his husband, and still watchful over his mate. No, whatever led him to dive at the chance to shift his focus from his mate to his husband, it hadn’t been an uncomfortable friction in his bond with his mate. He wasn’t chafing.

For all that April could surmise, he appeared to have answered her as bluntly as she’d posed the question. He, too, was split with things as they were. Too split to sustain them all. April had concluded ages ago that the biological mandate of their Mating-bond didn’t leave space for an intimacy such as Castiel shared with Dean. They were simply too different for that. And it seemed now that Castiel had reached the same conclusion but that he was too righteous a gentleman to admit it first. That wasn’t the same thing as finding fault with the True-mate Trigger that tied them together. Mates they were, and mates they should be. But they weren’t marriage material.

Michael though.

He slung a leg over hers and snuggled in close, letting the rocking of the coach shift them ever tighter under the light blanket. He smelled good. He was warm without being stifling. He was solid without being hard. He was supportive. And gentle. And funny. And accepting. And generous.

Oh, lord.

April sighed again, and Michael responded by snaking a hand down to her butt to rub the lingering sting out.

“When I wake up, we should talk,” she muttered.

“Why do I suddenly feel the need to dodge another shoe?” he grumbled halfheartedly.

The drive across Missouri went smoothly. Planning for most every eventuality was a tedious business, but the resultant journey going off without a hitch made the hours spent planning well worth it. April explained to Michael much of what she’d discussed with her mate as the two mothers shared a cement bench at a rest stop picnic table and nursed pups side by side. Michael heard it with a blank expression, his eyes fixed on the horizon, his face going pale at the realization that to make it work – putting an arms’ length between the Alpha and his mate – April really did need a Claim from Michael. He couldn’t be her fallback if he couldn’t feel her internally. Barring that, if he proved incapable, April would have no choice but to depend upon Cain for immediate response, not Michael.

“I don’t want that,” she admitted softly with her eyes on Kat’s dozy face. “I want you. God help me, Michael, I want you. I don’t have a right to ask that of you. And Cas…Cas is taking you for granted, and that’s not fair. Michael you don’t have to…”

“I want to, Pete,” he broke in. “I need permission from Dean, I guess. A blessing, at least.” Michael took a deep breath which expanded his chest and disrupted Alex’s suckling. The pup grunted and lunged back in for the nipple he’d lost. Michael absently lifted his son to his shoulder and began a percussive rapping on his back. “And I don’t wanna try to do it away from home. We can wait until we get back home, can’t we?”

“Of course,” she murmured quietly. “Cas and Cain are both close enough to catch me if I fall in New York. I feel stable right now. I shouldn’t need anything else until we check into the hotel at the soonest. Michael, they’re planning on daily spankings the whole time we’re away from home to head off any chance of an upset.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m not scared. I’m happy they thought to get ahead of my stress. It’s the premiere that I’m frightened about.” She confessed carefully, wiping Kat’s chin and flipping her to the opposite side. Most of what Kat was feeding on was slow to release since she was taking the leftovers from her siblings’ turns. It let the two Omegas linger a little longer than strictly necessary while the alphas shuffled everyone to the restrooms, to the changing tables, into the late afternoon sunshine to stretch legs. “If they hadn’t suggested it, I would be asking for a turn over someone’s lap every day anyway. It centers me. It stops the whirling in my head.”

“Yeah, I know,” he admitted. “You’re not expecting me to take over that part too, are you? Pete, I can’t…”

“No, Michael. Cas is still my mate. Cain is still my chaperone. What’s changing is…I guess we could say…Alpha isn’t going to keep pretending he can be my boyfriend.”

Michael spewed the water he’d just put to his lips, and Alex squawked a startled protest. “Jesus, sorry, Ace.” Michael mopped him up, and then juggled to get his shirt pulled back down. “Boyfriend?! Seriously? Pete, he was never going to be that to you.” He stood up and adjusted Alex to sit on his hip. “You had to know that.”

“Most mates…” she began, but then she stopped and stared forlornly at him. “I know. I’ve known for a long time. We’ve all known, haven’t we? We’ve been heading in this direction since the beginning, but… Michael, Mating-bonds are tricky things. If we worded it badly, we could’ve done permanent damage to our bond. We had to be careful. He couldn’t have said it first. He had to wait on me. And there couldn’t be any trace of a rejection in the way we put it.”

Michael laughed. He laughed gently at first, and then he threw his head back and snorted. April smiled patiently at first before giving over to a smile and then a chuckle.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” she grumbled, still snickering.

Michael swooped in and dumped Alex on her lap as he swiped Kathleen and set to burping her on his shoulder. April caught the boy and shook her head slowly as she buttoned back up. “You’re nuts.”

He was still laughing, dancing a bit as he coddled his daughter, but he licked his lips and explained. “You dumped the single most powerful man in the world on his ass. You don’t think that’s funny? What’s more, he’s thrilled to be dumped. And here you are with starry eyes asking for me instead. Me. Pete, the two of you are a matched set. You’re both certifiable.”

“I didn’t _dump_ him, you ass. We’re still mates.”

“Yeah,” Michael agreed quietly as his laugh lines faded. “But he’s not your _fella,_ is what you’re telling me. And Cain is a Sub. Does that mean you’ll be looking elsewhere for a Dominant?” He couldn’t meet her eyes suddenly.

“He’s still my Dom,” she confessed. “Unless you want to apply for the job.” She was likewise incapable of looking at him.

He blanched, unseen. He kissed Kat’s temple. “Pete, I can’t,” he whispered. “I told you.”

“I know. I know, Michael. It would be too…weird. And it would be unfair to Dean.”

“No, it’s not that. Damnit, Pete, the alphas can deal. Don’t you dare put their needs ahead of ours. It’s just that that side of me, Pete, it’s unclean. It’s tainted. I can’t put it any better than that. I don’t want my wolf anywhere near what I have going with you. He’ll tear it all down. You don’t know what he’s like. He’ll ruin us.”

“But Dean…” she began, and he interrupted her fiercely.

“Dean isn’t you! He knows the gutter, April. He’s been down there too, and there’s no coming all the way back from that once you’ve been there. He’s strong enough – physically strong enough – to take it without scarring. Maybe he’s carrying so many scars they just don’t show anymore. I don’t know. But he’s broken in a way that’s not fixable, and the darkest part of me, it actually helps glue him back together. It’s fucked up and sick, and if I could change it, I would, but I can’t. The two of us are sick in the same direction. We heal each other on our own excess.

“Goddamnit, this is coming out all wrong! I don’t want to be that man, April! I want to be able to shed my skin like a snake and be someone else for you. We’ve been over this! I thought you understood! You can’t ask that of me. I can’t do it. I can’t!”

April didn’t reply right away. Alex practiced standing upright on her lap with her hands circling his torso. He bounced up and down on her thighs and grinned at her. She smiled back, encouraging him. She broke the silence without looking away from the pup.

“It’s the same agreement you and Cas have to share Dean, Michael. But in reverse, so to speak. And without a Tertiary element to complicate things. You adjusted to shared custody once. Can you do it again? And I’m talking about a permanent arrangement. Michael Quentin, I love you. I want you. We can build something brand new if we throw ourselves into it and decide. There’s nothing stopping us.”

He turned away and paced slowly along the walking path toward the stand-alone restroom buildings. Alex cried out a nonsense syllable in protest, but Michael didn’t go far. He turned and came back without any fanfare. He was thinking, processing. He sidled all the way up to the picnic table where she sat facing outward and harrumphed as he threw himself dramatically back down beside her.

“How permanent?” he asked at a whisper. Alex made a grab for his nose. April swallowed. This close, his eyes were intense.

“For as long as you’ll have me?” she asked carefully. “Michael, I want to grow old next to you.”

“We’ve already got that,” he pointed out, but he found his hand kneading the muscles at her shoulder.

“No more waffling,” she tried again. “No more taking it step by step, cautiously, whatever. I want to be yours. For good.”

“Pete, I don’t want to… We’re not apes. I mean, do you need a…?”

She giggled. “It’s not a proposal,” she confirmed, and she watched a weight slip off his chest to puddle on the ground.

He smiled. “I’m not seeing the change, then,” he confessed. “What’s different?”

She reached out and put a hand on his thigh which he immediately covered with his own hand. “Michael, I need you to Claim me. We can’t do this blind. We’re not Primates, as you pointed out. But Claim me and see. You’ll see. I can’t begin to put it into words. But I can share it with you if you’ll build us a line. Will you do that? Just once.”

“Yeah,” he nodded around the lump in his throat. “Yeah. I’ll do that. I need to talk to Dean.”

“And Cas,” she added. “You’ll need to re-open negotiations with Alpha.”

“Terrific,” he deadpanned. He stood and pulled her to her feet. April dumped their water bottles back into the bag at their feet and then shouldered the bag. Michael wrapped an arm across her shoulders and led her down the walkway back toward the coach. He leaned across her and blew a raspberry on the back of Ace’s neck, and the pup cackled in delight. Michael smiled. He glanced down. Kat was fast asleep. “I think I can swing that,” he decided. “I wouldn’t do it for just anyone though.”

“I’m flattered,” she joshed with a subdued smile and a blush.

Castiel stood in the stairwell door of the coach with his hand shading his eyes, watching them approach. As they neared, his face cleared from concerned to resigned. He offered April a tight-lipped smile as he took Alex and helped her up.

“I hope you’re sure about this, Castiel,” Michael quipped as he climbed aboard. He didn’t bother to explain. “I expect you to keep your word this time.”

“While I appreciate your uncertainty, Omega,” Cas replied evenly. “I’ve had it with the tone.” Dean’s head came up from scanning a tablet in his hands in one of the front bench seats along the side of the coach. He looked back and forth between the two of them.

“What’s going on?” he prompted.

“Michael has just pushed my last button, Dean. Permission to apply a disciplinary correction?”

“Um, man, you don’t need my permission. What’d he do? Michael?” Dean straightened to his full height and tugged his alpha into place behind his eyes. He fixed his mate with a stern and forbidding look.

Michael nodded down at the sleeping infant in his arms, and Dean let him pass to lay her safely in her car seat. He buckled her in without waking her. Dean waited. Castiel eased past them both with a heavy look into Dean’s eyes as he wended his way toward the back compartment, dropping the pup back off to April on his way.

“I don’t know, Dean,” Michael admitted. “I’m irritable. Everything about him is setting me on edge. Have you heard about what’s going on between Cas and Pete? Did your husband tell you they broke up? That he’s basically shunted her off onto me whether that’s what we wanted or not? I mean seriously. The gall. First he’s so against the idea that I worried he might actually _kill_ me. And now, I’m his stand-in, a plug-and-play substitute mate, without so much as a by-your-leave. It’s the entitlement, Dean. It pisses me off. I could probably handle it better. But I shouldn’t have to handle it at all.”

Dean sighed and shook his head with his lips compressed. He glanced across at April. She looked up carefully from her seat on the bench that Dean had left. Her blue eyes peeked from behind her long lashes, and Dean rolled his. She had nothing to say. He turned back to Michael who swallowed uncomfortably.

“You were rude to him?” he checked.

“I had good reason,” Michael returned stubbornly.

“No,” Dean disagreed. “We’ve talked about this. Whatever you need to say, you do it politely. Head on back there and take your swats. I’m not going to protect you this time. Go on, git.” Dean smacked Michael’s backside, and the Omega grimaced. He huffed, but there was no appeal available. He stomped unhappily toward the back and closed the thin door behind him a little too hard for travel board.

Dean turned to face April. She peeked up at him again. He raised his eyebrows. She licked her lips. Behind Dean, Sam and Jess climbed back onto the coach with the twins. Dean grabbed hold of the overhead rack and leaned out of the walkway to let them pass. It brought him closer to April, and she leaned further away.

“Broke up?” he prompted. “You’ll excuse my language, but that’s bullshit.”

“It’s not that cut and dried,” she admitted, wringing her hands. “I told you he wasn’t boyfriend material for me.”

“Yep. I remember that. What’s crawled up Michael’s ass? Unless I’m mistaken, you and he both decided he _IS_ boyfriend material. Now he’s not interested?”

The sound of Michael’s impactful correction was barely muffled at all by the paper-thin wall at the back of the bus, and Dean and April both turned at the hot slaps and corresponding pained grunts. At the front, Gabe climbed up the stair followed by Kali. Each had a triplet pup in their arms. Cain and Sarah followed right behind. Dean ignored them all, returning to the Ozzie and fixing April with his fiercest glare.

“Kid? Michael? Spill.”

She looked on the verge of breaking down, but instead turned to face the front of the coach as it pulled away and headed back to the interstate.

“April, your boyfriend is back there right now getting his butt roasted over mouthing off. He had to be some pissed off to risk that. I wanna know what’s going on, and I mean now!”

They had an audience at this point. The sounds of flesh striking flesh paused from the back, but once the coach reached cruising speed again, they resumed. Michael was in tears at this point. Dean could both feel and hear them. His heart went out to his mate, and it killed the last vestige of patience he had with April.

“Answer me, Omega!”

“Michael was pushing buttons before anything changed between Cas and I, Dean!” she burst out. “This isn’t my fault.”

Dean thought back carefully. She had a point. But there was a great deal she wasn’t saying. He sat down beside her, mindfully ignoring Cain and Sam, both watching carefully. “Yeah, whatever. Maybe. But what the hell is he talking about? And don’t tell me Cas dumped you. Mates don’t work like that.”

“I asked him to, Dean,” she said with a shaky voice. “I told him I thought we would be better off with some space between us. I told him I wanted him to focus more on you than on me. You’re _welcome._”

Dean scoffed in disbelief. “No you don’t. I don’t need your charity, kiddo. I can manage my own marriage, thanks.” The resounding slaps quickened in the back, and Michael’s voice rang out even louder as he called out a miserable apology. Everything ended abruptly. Dean could feel the relief and the resolution. Michael seemed calm and centered back there, and he was hugging hard as the coach swayed.

“No, Dean. I didn’t do it _for_ you. I did it for myself. For my relationship with Michael. And for Cas. My mate is tearing himself in two trying to be everything for you and me both. But he _isn’t_ that to me. Not what he is to you. It’s not going to work.”

“So you’re stepping out into an afterthought? That what you’re telling me?” Dean couldn’t wrap his head around it. What did she mean? “Did Michael get a heads up or did you blindside him?”

She took his hand in both of hers and held it in her lap. “I let Castiel go for you once, Dean, and that was hard. But everything got better. The thing is, I didn’t fully let him go. I just…moved over a little. I gave him permission to be pulled in two for the rest of our lives. And, god, he’s trying. He’s trying so hard to be everything for both of us.” She cut herself off and pressed her lips back together, turning away but clutching his hand.

“Hey.” He shook her hands a little, and she focused down at her lap, tears spilling and dripping from her nose. “Hey,” he repeated, firmer. “Forget what Cas might need. Forget me. What you and Michael have going is real, kid. I don’t understand what he’s angry about. Did he cut you loose too?”

She trembled a soft laugh. “No. Michael loves me, Dean. I’m sure of it. And I love him. I think I can safely say it’s forever for us. I know that sounds crazy. But even without a Claim-bond, I can feel it. I can feel him.”

“I’m still lost.”

“You should ask Michael,” she said, letting go of his hand to swipe at her eyes.

“Oh, I will. Don’t you worry about that. But right now I’m asking you.”

April licked her lips again and looked up at Dean with a devastated expression. “He’s never been able to hold onto anything before, Dean. Don’t you see? He finally won something from an Alpha. He won something the alpha didn’t want to lose. And now…”

Dean closed his eyes and took over from her. “…Now it’s like getting a hand-me-down that the alpha doesn’t want anymore.”

April looked back at her lap. “He doesn’t mean it, Dean. I’m sure he doesn’t. He doesn’t appreciate being a foregone conclusion. He’s made a lot of progress at accepting his place as an Omega in a very short time, but he still balks at being managed, even if it’s for his own good.”

“And what does that make you, huh?” Dean asked shortly, his temper flipping targets. “The two of them handing you back and forth like a cut of steak, deciding who gets the biggest portion? This is the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard. Jesus Christ, why can’t you people accept happiness when it’s staring you in the face? Michael’s mad because he got you by committee vote instead of a bar brawl? Who the fuck cares how it happened? He wants you. You want him. Your mates are both all in for whatever you decide is right for the two of you, and now he wants a do-over so he can battle for your hand?”

“Dean, please. You can’t know what it’s like for an Omega!”

“And you sat there and let him rile himself into a tizzy until his ass was on the line!”

She clamped her mouth closed and looked away again.

“Jesus Fucking _Christ!_” Dean shouted. The driver checked him through the rearview mirror, then resumed his attentive navigation. Everything cleared for Dean in an instant. Her eyes. They were empty. She was hiding behind her veil, and Dean stared hard. Pieces all fell into place. All three of the tortured love triangle stood to gain if things worked out well. And Dean would win more of Castiel, but…less of Michael?

“What did you do?” he demanded. April’s jaw twitched, but she didn’t answer.

Sam leaned forward in his seat and added commentary for the first time. “Michael’s been mouthy for at least a week, Dean. He was pushing everyone’s buttons, even mine. This may have been the last straw, but that camel was already carrying a heavy load.”

“I agree,” Cain added with his head down toward his phone screen and an uncomfortable shift of position.

Dean threw his hands up. “If you’ll all excuse me, I have a mate to see to. Kid, you’ve got the pups. Shout if you need help.”

“There are enough adults to take care of the pups, alpha,” Kali stated assertively. She shuffled across and took Dean’s spot beside April as he stumbled to the back. “Go on. We’re fine.”

***************

Dean held his mate’s eyes, refusing to let Michael look away. “Convince me, Michael.” The bus rocked precariously, and they both reached for something to hold onto in the tiny back room.

Michael wasn’t the tortured boy he’d been when Dean met him, and he wasn’t naïve. But Dean couldn’t read him. There was a pain and a resignation in his eyes that twisted Dean’s gut into knots. “If I love her,” he said simply, “then I love her – all of her, even the broken parts. And I do, Dean. I’m not happy about how it’s happened, but I’m thrilled at how it’s turning out.”

“So she gets away with it? Again?” Dean pressed with his forehead furrowed. “She played you, man. A-fucking-gain.”

“No,” Michael disagreed. “She hadn’t talked to me yet, but she was planning to. Castiel forced the topic before she was ready to go there. It’s not the manipulation it looks like. She told me everything the first chance she got.”

“You’re not this stupid, man. She played you. She threw you to the wolves. She hatched a scheme to shift the dynamics that all four of us have worked so hard for without consulting any of us about it, and it all hinged on you being smitten enough to take whatever they offer you!”

“But I am smitten, Dean! I DO want her. I _want THIS_. You want me to take a stand on principle and risk losing her? For what? To teach her a lesson? That’s not my job, alpha. And I promised her I’d stand beside her, no questions asked. I keep my word, Dean.”

“And she promised you she wouldn’t involve you in her schemes anymore,” Dean pointed out coldly.

“She didn’t mean for it to all come tumbling out at once,” Michael persisted. “She planned to negotiate for some space in New York and to woo me there. Think about it. All she asked Cas for was some distance. He made the next big jump. He forced her to admit that where he left a void in her life, there was room for someone else to fill it.”

“You didn’t see her face when you took the fall, Michael.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But you were right that there’s no excuse for what I said or how I said it. I earned that spanking all by myself, and I’m man enough to admit it.”

“You’re not mad at April at all,” Dean said softly. “Man, you’re fucked before this relationship even gets off the ground.”

Michael raised his chin and crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s my decision, Dean. Not yours. Not Castiel’s. It’s between Pete and me. We have some tough conversations coming when we get back home. But I’m not going to lose her, Dean. I’m not.” Michael’s eyes blazed golden.

Dean felt a wash of pain in his gut. He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was far smaller than usual. “Don’t leave me for her, Michael. Please, man. I need you. I’ve never asked before, but I’m begging you now. I don’t know what’s breaking between those two, but they aren’t us. Right? You and me, we’re still solid. Don’t leave me. I don’t need any goddamn distance.”

Michael was in his space in an instant, kissing him, whimpering into his mouth in his rush to reassure his mate.

***************

The premiere was a raging success, and all of them felt the whirlwind speed up exponentially. Matt and Mark, Rowena and Cain, worked nonstop to lay groundwork in shining golden bricks that Nick carefully handed April down, a beaming Michael at her side. The reviews called her an epiphany, an aural orgasm, a revelation, singling out the pieces that were hers alone for line-by-line, phrase-by-phrase examination and resounding praise.

April was speechless.

Never in her wildest dreams.

Not even in her wildest dreams.

The phone never stopped ringing, turning their hotel suite into a scurrying anthill.

Nicholas whisked her away from the frantic pace and sat her down at a grand piano in a rented studio. It wasn’t her piano, and her fingers knew the difference, but Michael sat beside her, and she sang for him. To him.

And Nick beamed and told her she was his retirement plan. Michael kissed her hard, and she giggled manically against his lips. Their mates were who knew where doing who knew what, and April felt free for the first time in her life. Really free. With Michael right here beside her. They listened to the playback together, April erupting into uncontrollable giggles, and Michael grinning stupidly.

Nick talked the plan through with Castiel and the entire team. The single would be ready for release in time for Tony Award nominations, paired with a B-side that could stand as an anthem of its own. Releasing the show’s anthem as a single would serve as publicity for the stage performance, drawing in crowds from far and wide. The fact that it was the composer’s voice on the single highlighted her in a way that her name on the playbill wouldn’t do alone. Nick was positive that by this time next year, she would be a household name, and Cain agreed.

The train was well and truly clear of the station now, and there was no going back.

At the end of the stint, as the Pack returned to the hotel from an exhausting evening of interviews and cocktail parties, April found herself alone in her room with her mate. He tossed his formal scarf onto the enormous bed and pulled her in by her fingertips. He wrapped himself around her, breathing her scent and finding home again. He was spinning furiously. His mate had to be nearly undone.

“Are you happy, Kitten?”

“I’m thrilled, Cas.”

He kissed her deeply, pressing her back against the flat wall, assaulting her with his lips and his tongue. He searched for her center, and couldn’t place it. She was swirling too fast.

“Scene with me,” he whispered roughly, desperately. “I need you.”

It was more for her than it was for him, but they both pretended otherwise. A desperate Alpha doesn’t appreciate being contradicted. He’d been as good as his word for two whole weeks in the city, turning his eyes, his hands, his heart toward his husband, and leaving his mate in the capable hands of people he loved and trusted. And she was glorious. For all that she could glean from Michael, from Cain, Nick and Mark and Rowena…April needed her mate for this. And he needed her.

He had Dean, of course. Always Dean.

But a mate wasn’t a spouse. A mate was ‘Self’ and ‘Not Self’ all at once, and no one else could scratch that specific itch the way she could. The way he could. Their eyes blazed Secondary, and they stopped talking in words.

In the morning, Castiel’s fingers tangled with Dean’s as they climbed back onto the coach. Cas carried Jimmy. Dean had Idgie. April had Ace. Michael brought up the rear with a squalling Kathleen. Paparazzi shouted their names and snapped photos but were largely ignored.

They were triumphant and exhausted and ready to go home. From here, the production company had custody of the show. April’s job was done. It was time to turn to something else. Something new.

Castiel settled the pups into their carriers and then sat next to Emma’s car seat and pulled Dean down to straddle his lap. Dean hissed as Cas’ hands grasped him by the ass to pull him in.

“Easy there, Alpha,” he cautioned. “I think I’m wearing bruises this morning.”

“Rough night?” Cas asked. He rubbed his unshaven cheek abrasively across Dean’s meticulously groomed face.

“The best kind,” Dean confirmed. “We pulled out _all_ the stops.”

“Are you too sore to warm me this morning?” the Alpha questioned carefully.

“Never, Alpha. But, um, isn’t that April’s place in the morning?” Dean bit his lip. Cas’ hands roamed possessively. Dean leaned into them wherever they explored.

“I expect a few things will be changing from now on, Pet. April’s got other responsibilities to tend to, which leaves me out in the cold, I’m afraid. So, I’m asking you.”

The coach jolted as it merged into traffic. Sarah collapsed gracelessly into the seat beside the two alphas, knocking into Dean.

“Oh! Sorry, alpha,” she pardoned, finding her balance again.

Castiel raised a brow. “Kindly refrain from addressing my Submissive while he’s working, beta.” To Dean, Cas nodded toward a folded baby blanket, and Dean grinned. He slid backward off Castiel’s lap and tossed the blanket on the floor between his feet.

Without speaking any further and holding the Dom’s eye the entire time, Dean unbuckled Castiel’s belt expertly with his teeth and then attacked the fastenings of his slacks. He took Castiel’s soft cock carefully into his mouth then settled in with his eyes closed to float calmly for as long as his Dom required.

A hand carded through his hair. Nails scritched at his scalp. A soft voice praised him occasionally. Cas caught Sarah up in an intense discussion about the media coverage from the premiere and their multitude of appearances, the outing of the Omegas’ fledgling relationship. The tone of bitterness and resentment at the raging success of an _Ozzie_, of all things, was growing darker by the day from certain sections of their species, and they required a response. Cas outlined his plan to the young researcher, and she had plenty to add, as did Sam and Gabriel. Soon, the entire Pack was deep in discussion and planning.

Everyone but Dean.

Dean floated outside of it all. There would be plenty more discussions. Nothing would happen without his input. But for now, he wasn’t present in the same way the others were. He was taken in hand and floating blissfully.

And when Cas used his mouth, more than an hour later, to pound out his release, Dean swallowed every drop and then stretched out lazily across the bench that Sarah had abandoned to sleep with his head in his husband’s lap, fingers still carding contentedly through his hair as the miles churned slowly by.


	2. Wednesday, October 3, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael wants a confrontation and gets more than he bargained for. Cas & Dean are searching for ringers to plump up their staffing pool. And the king enjoys his spoils.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happiest of holidays to all y'all. It's Winter Solstice time and so I'm turning my face back toward the light. I don't like the darkness. It does a number on me.
> 
> JaxCon was a blast. I got to meet folks in person that I know only through the blinky screens, and that was lovely in every way. Steeleye1 and I shared mojitos and photo ops and had a grand time. Ibelieve333 and I chatted all too briefly. I wish it could have lasted longer than it did.
> 
> It feels like forever since I last put words into my flashdrive. I'm right on pace with my usual output, but it doesn't feel that way.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to Jennyfly for the support and the collage.

Jonathon searched feverishly through the documents on his lap. He was flustered and stressed, and Castiel knew it had more to do with the pressure to perform in Castiel’s presence than the swiftly looming deadline. He had that effect on people who didn’t know him well, and there was no fix for it but time. Cas watched a bead of sweat leave the man’s hairline and slip down his temple.

He turned to Billie instead to give Jonathon a moment to collect himself.

“I’m taking Adam and Jack out with me tonight,” he told her, changing the subject entirely. “It may be a harebrained idea to recruit from the back alleys, but Dean’s convinced that if we can convince the twins, the rest will follow. Considering our persistent manpower shortage in Contracting, I’m ready to try a ‘Hail Mary’.”

Billie didn’t look up. “You won’t hear an argument from me,” she replied coolly. “Except if we can’t get _this_ fiasco lined out by tonight, staffing will be the least of our worries.”

Michael’s knock at the doorframe of Castiel’s home office was quiet and short, hesitant in a way that gave away his purpose. The door was wide open, so he saw Castiel’s expression cross from concentration to annoyance to flat acceptance in an instant. Billie looked round from her spot on the sofa, but Jonathon didn’t even pause. His finger traced crazily across the page he was skimming as he searched for the passage he needed.

He only looked up when Castiel spoke. 

“What is it, Michael? We’re really very busy at the moment. Can it wait?”

“Yes, sir,” Michael told him carefully. “But it can’t wait forever. Catching you in a moment when you’re not inundated with work or buried in pups is proving harder than I anticipated. We need to talk, you and I.”

Castiel’s face registered that he could feel the weight and urgency behind Michael intentions. He held the Omega’s eyes steadily for a beat, and then he nodded.

Billie put a hand up in a staying motion. “Sir, they need an answer by two. We’ve got hours of work in front of us. Whatever this is, surely it can hold until tomorrow. We need you here right now.”

Cas met her eye and then Jonathon’s, both subordinates in agreement that now was not the time for the Alpha to absent himself. Jonathon’s finger was pressed into his page as if pinning his selected passage in place like a cat with its paw on the mouse’s tail. “Sir…” he said.

Castiel pursed his lips, looked down at the documents spread across his desk in apparent mayhem, and then huffed a sigh through his nose and closed his eyes.

“Cas, you promised…” Billie began, reading his body language.

“You don’t need me, beta,” he answered as his eyes opened again. “I trust your judgment. I grant you authority to decide in my place. I’ll support whatever you and Jonathon propose.”

“Castiel!”

The Alpha stood up and stepped around his desk. Billie stood too, but it might have been purely from shock. Jonathon’s mouth fell slack. Cas bracketed Billie with a hand on each shoulder, squaring her up before him, and he smiled gamely. “You wanted a chance to put your spin on the company’s direction, Sparky. Here’s your chance. Go get ‘em, kiddo. I’ll be back in a bit. I expect to be wowed by your brilliance. Show me I was right to pick you for the front spot.” He patted her a couple of times on the upper arm, squeezed it, and then turned and gestured to Michael to lead the way.

“Castiel James!”

“Billie, you can do this,” he said, barely turning, his face in profile. “You’ve waited your entire life to get a chance to do this. You’re ready, and your turn is up. Use my desk. It’ll help you spread out enough to see the big picture.”

“You’re an asshole,” she accused. “You set this up.”

He chuckled and winked. He disappeared around the corner without answering the accusation and Michael followed mutely, wondering if Cas had indeed set it up somehow. If he had, Michael wasn’t in on it, and that meant Michael had been set up as well.

It figured.

Michael had been patient but they’d been home for several weeks after the spectacle of the New York premiere, and the Alpha hadn’t graced Michael with more than a condescending few moments here and there between far more urgent appointments. Even his usual tutoring sessions had become perfunctory Q&A stopgap meetings, no longer than they absolutely had to be to make sure that Michael was keeping his head above water in his classes and in the framework of his Dominant position over his mate. Cas was barely present at all. Had he somehow calculated Michael’s explosive countdown clock hitting zero just as Billie, Cas, and Jonathon were securing the final directional statements for the next fiscal year?

Could he read Michael that well?

Would he do that to the two of them if he could?

Castiel didn’t go far. The library was across the hall from his office. Cas led Michael in and closed the door behind him. They wouldn’t be disturbed. The library door was always open, so closing it was a clear declaration of intent.

“Is she right, sir?” Michael couldn’t resist asking. “Did you set us up?”

Cas coughed subtly into his fist, but he didn’t demur. “Often I’ve found that a sense of urgency, of emergency even, can shunt someone over a sticky bump in their developmental road. Call it a stretch exercise if you like. Billie would have frozen up in any scenario but being dropped unexpectedly into the deep end. She’s going to be brilliant, but she’s not someone who grows in a linear trajectory, Michael. She’s losing her mind with impatience and having new responsibilities doled out piecemeal. This is better.”

“Better. You couldn’t have warned her? It had to be a shock? Seriously?” Michael wandered deeper into the library passing his hand over the backs of the comfortable rolling chairs at the long table in the center as he strolled.

“The adrenalin rush is part of the process for Billie,” Cas replied reasonably. “So, yes, it was necessary to surprise her.”

“That means you knew I would hit the limit of my patience today…”

“I expected you at my door yesterday, actually,” Cas admitted. “I’ve had to do some juggling to keep Billie poised to catch something critical in my absence. What it fell to is substantially more than I planned to drop in her lap.” Cas chuckled again, his gaze lengthening as his mind turned internal. “It’s a good thing I trust her as much as I do. She’s got my entire mission in her hands right now.”

“No one likes to be used, Sir,” Michael pointed out. “I’d rather be left out of your schemes if you don’t mind.”

Cas sighed expansively and shook his head. “Consider it a fee of admission to my Pack. We all pay dues, Omega, in one form or another. You know me well enough by now to have seen under the curtain. No one close to me is exempt, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just to assuage your prickly sense of righteousness. People like us make our own rules. You don’t have to like it. I don’t require your approval. I am Alpha, and I am not shy about taking what is mine to take. If you find you cannot live with it, you know where the door is.”

It was the coldest and most real Castiel had ever been in Michael’s presence outside of a crisis, and the Omega was speechless. He blinked. Cas had just ripped the drape straight off the rod and bared everything that polite society fretted over, everything that apes accused wolves of, all the inequity and presumption laid bare. Castiel’s blue eyes didn’t falter, didn’t show any sign of ambivalence or regret. He waited calmly, stoic as ever, for Michael to process what he’d been shown and respond.

Michael swallowed. He wondered if Dean had seen this side of Castiel. Surely he had. They had years of intimacy under their belts. They’d faced countless tough spots that Cas, at least, would have turned to manipulation to solve. Dean knew Cas was a scheming bastard, but did he know that the man was brutally indifferent about it? Did he know how utterly unrepentant the man was at heart?

Michael decided a little exploration of the man’s bared soul was called for. He pulled himself together and put his wolf in front. 

“The door…The one you offer me as an escape if I don’t wanna be serially used in your plots…What are the chances I would actually be permitted to walk through it?”

Castiel laughed.

“This is funny to you?”

“Cutting through all the bullshit is a natural gift of yours, Michael. I’ve come to depend upon it, and it’s one of the things I love most about you. No, you’re right. There’s not a door that opens to anything but a brick wall for you, is there? So let’s dispense with any pretense that you have any choice. Can we move on now, or do we need to trudge through every strand of minutia about the Alpha entitlement as it pertains to this Pack?”

“God, you really are a piece of work.”

Castiel slapped his palm onto the center table, making Michael jump. “We are not apes, Omega,” he said fiercely through clenched teeth. “I pretended to be a monkey my entire childhood and adolescence, and it nearly killed me. It nearly killed _you_, Michael Quentin. You _don’t_ have to like it. But our lives don’t come out fair. I get more than you do. In every way except bearing children. Do you hear me?” His eyes went crimson, and his voice took on a fervency that pinned Michael in place. “I give as much as I can to the illusion of equity, and I try my damnedest to honor the humanity and inherent value of each and every person I encounter, but, Michael, equity is an illusion. You’re not a child anymore. I’m not going to shield you from the realities of Pack. You deserve better.”

“I deserve… Jesus, do you even hear yourself? Shield me from the realities? What the fuck do you know of the realities of Pack?” Michael spat acerbically. 

“I know that it’s useless to bury our heads in the sand and wish it could be different. Michael, we don’t simply need hierarchy. We need a hierarchy that has _teeth,_ or it’s meaningless. Don’t you get it by now? I could choose another avenue to play it out, but that only changes the flavor of the onus I place upon your heads. It doesn’t alter the weight.”

“You manipulate us for our own good,” Michael told the tabletop flatly.

“Would you rather be raped and beaten?” Cas imbued his tone with an icy cold steel that brought Michael’s head up and set his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “The hierarchy is _everything._ We are _not_ apes, Michael, and the moment we forget who we are, we fall again. That’s not going to happen in _MY PACK_ under _my watch._ Get used to it or get used to being miserable.”

“It’s a bit convenient that the most humane means of keeping us all under your thumb is precisely the technique that suits you best, then, isn’t it?” Michael muttered. “How perfectly elegant.”

“You didn’t interrupt me in my office to talk about Pack Hierarchical theory,” Cas reminded him. He pulled a chair out from beneath the table and sat down, stretching his legs out under the table and crossing his ankles. “You want to talk about Dean and April. I’m all ears. Lay it on me.”

“What difference does it make?” Michael asked fatalistically, falling into a chair across the table from his rival and glaring daggers at the ceiling. “You’ve already decided what it’s going to look like among the four of us.”

“I haven’t, actually,” Cas replied calmly. “But I will if you forfeit your chance to have a hand in the setting of stipulations.”

Michael set his jaw and lowered his gaze from the intricately designed cornice to look the Alpha straight in his eyes. Castiel’s wolf was right there, in his eyes, not in control, but very present. His Alpha-red eyes told the Omega that however calm his face was, this was a moment of high intensity for the Alpha, and Michael felt his nerve catch for a moment. He licked his lips.

“You’re in breach of contract,” Michael said finally, his voice steadier than expected. “You stole my mate from me in clear violation of our agreement, and I want him back, full stop.”

“I thought we settled this more than a year ago…” Cas began.

“In New York!” Michael clarified. “You monopolized his time on that trip based on Pete’s directive, and you haven’t reverted back to your agreement with me yet. You’re still monopolizing his time. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember authorizing April to speak for me on matters of my mate.”

Cas drew himself up straighter and folded his hands on the table before him. “I propose a renegotiation,” he said.

“What? After you just drilled me with the _’Realities of Pack’_? As if I have any chance of getting anything you don’t wanna give? I don’t want a renegotiation, Castiel. I want what we agreed to and I want compensation for what you took over and above what you had claim to!”

Cas rubbed his chin in thought and frowned. “I may be a manipulative bastard, my friend, but I’m also a man of my word. Mostly. I owe you suitable restitution if I expect you ever to trust me again. And I need you to trust me, regardless of Pack Realities.”

Michael huffed impatiently. “You’re such a prick. Seriously?”

“Watch it, Michael. Name-calling is as out of bounds now as it ever has been.”

“Whatever,” Michael replied simply. “Go ahead and start a tally. I’ll pay up when we’ve reached an agreement.”

Cas chuckled. “Very well. Although, I expect civility regardless. A tally is not license to spew abuse unchecked.”

“Of course not, sir. I would never,” Michael replied.

Cas rolled his eyes.

“Michael, you’re bright enough to realize that the only reason you got to witness me at my base-level scheming self just now is because I allowed you to see it. You should ask yourself why I would do that when keeping it hidden would make things so much easier between us.”

Michael had a sharp retort on the tip of his tongue, but then he stopped and he studied the man’s expression. Michael had both his wolf and his Omega pulled up in tight convergence, and he could see through both sets of eyes. He knew his irises had a golden halo around them even as the weight of his wolf made them cold.

Castiel spoke again into Michael’s hesitation. “No games, Omega. No curtains at all. No entitled tricks and hiding and subterfuge. I suspect I’m guilty of every sin you’ve ever suspected me of committing and a good many more that you haven’t even imagined me capable of. I’m a monster at heart, and I give allowances to the bestial side of me as often as I need to. I quite hypocritically deny doing so when my audience needs to be protected from the truth. I am a liar and a cheat and a brute. I have torn out the throats of living men with my teeth and reveled in the primal joy of conquest. I have set traps for my loved ones to fall unwarily into and pounced on them with glee when they stumbled. I will do the same in the future. For this is what I am, Michael. This is who we are. This is who _you_ are meant to contend with, and I will not deny you your rightful place. I deserve a rival like you, and you need the likes of me. Don’t pretend that the thought doesn’t make your blood quicken in your veins. I can smell you from here.”

Michael found himself fixated on red eyes. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t breathe.

Castiel continued. “Only my most trusted and loved ever see me admit to the full horror of who I am at heart. Most people assume that the monster is a rabid beast who lives caged inside me, separate and unwelcome, fed on scraps and utterly miserable in its prison. I want you to look at me and see the truth. I need you to know who I am – who I really am.”

“Jesus Christ,” Michael muttered, gripped by the depth of the Alpha’s eyes.

“Do not question me ever again over my tactics. I will not tolerate mutiny. I will tear you to pieces until the last dregs of your remaining limbs bow to me as they should, and I will toss the bits to Dean to reassemble however he can. Now. Renegotiations and remuneration. What would you ask of me?”

“Um.”

“Take your time.”

Michael swallowed. He broke his eyes free and caught sight of his hands, fingers tangled so tightly together they were white. Painstakingly, he untangled and flexed them. His mind was simultaneously frozen in place and whirling madly. It wasn’t a negotiation, and he’d always known it wouldn’t be. He was a beggar at Castiel’s feet, clutching beseechingly at the hem of his velvet robe, pleading for anything the king saw fit to grace him with. Everything clicked into place. Michael felt it through his Omega as a soft and welcome sigh of relief, at odds with everything Michael had ever wanted but as a realization that it was precisely what he needed. And for the first time in his life, it was a realization that came with a sense of security instead of rage. It was as if Michael’s Omega had been steering a bus full of children down a treacherous mountain path with jagged turns and no brakes for the last fifteen years of his life, and someone capable had finally assumed control of the wheel, delivering them all safely to the valley floor.

Michael’s wolf saw it from the opposite angle. Scrappy and contentious, the wolf respected nothing but power and its display. The wolf shivered at the blatant power dripping from every molecule of the man before him. Castiel was speaking the only language Michael’s wolf really understood, and that too was a relief in its way – not to have to wend through a miasma of double-speak and hidden intent. Here was power in its essence, proclaiming itself shamelessly. Here was a wolf who knew he was a wolf.

Michael’s human mind caught and stuck as always. _Take your time._ Right. Chew on it and choke, he meant. Reach the conclusion that resistance is futile and speak your peasant words of supplication. The king will bestow what the king sees fit.

“I want him back,” Michael said simply. “I want you to honor the agreement you made with me.”

Castiel nodded with a slight frown. “We can do that, if it’s really what you want, but are you not also mid-courtship with April? Do you not think your burgeoning relationship with her deserves more attention than our agreement over Dean allows?”

“All due respect, sir, I’d very much like it if you left my relationship with Pete between me and Pete.”

“_Pete and me,_ that would be, Michael.”

“Whatever.”

“So,” Cas continued. “We revert to a 4:3 weekly time split, in your favor, and what else? Refresh my memory.”

“You don’t scene with him without my permission.”

Cas scoffed. “Indeed. It may surprise you to hear, but Dean and I have never once _played,_ in a D/s scening sense without your approval. Not once. We’ve been exploring the more… romantic side of our sexual relationship lately, not that that is any of your business directly.”

“You…Wait…But…” Michael frowned in thought. “He was limping on Friday. He was sore and used. I didn’t authorize anything Thursday night…”

Cas laughed softly again. “I never said I didn’t fuck him lame, Omega. I said I didn’t scene with him. You’ll recall that the girth of my penis is substantial when erect. Not to put too fine a point on a blunt object, but he’s always going to limp after sex with me, regardless of the mindsets involved. You’ll further recall that I explicitly reserved the right to conjugal touching from the very start of negotiations. I’ve acted in good faith all along on that point.”

“It’s not fair though, sir. One hard night with you can tie him up to convalesce for the next two or three. By the time he’s healed, it’s your turn again.”

“Then I suggest the two of you get creative. There is more to scening than sexual congress.”

Michael devolved into pouting, his jaw working unsubtly under the line of his flesh.

Cas leaned forward. “Alternatively, talk to me more often, and I’ll make accommodations for your plans. We were working together seamlessly before April pulled her latest stunt and threw all of us into scrambling. Let’s attempt to upright the hull and find our center again. Are you with me?”

“You’re blaming Pete for this mess?” Michael blinked. It was exactly what Dean had said.

Cas shook his head in sympathy. “Michael, there’s besotted, and then there’s just blindness. Don’t be a fool. April leads all of us around by the nose.”

“I don’t care how deeply she plays, sir. You’re the Alpha. You control everything. You want me to see the truth about you? Then be honest about this one.” Michael felt a shiver of fear crawl up his spine. Cas’ wolf was too close to the surface for a direct confrontation, but Michael’s mouth had been taking notes from his mate, and it refused to stop moving. “What actually happened there? Who did what? How much was you and how much was her?”

Castiel sat back in his chair. He tilted his head and regarded the man before him. Was he sizing up his prey? A blunt finger passed over his lip and then stroked back again. The red dissipated fully from his eyes, leaving them an uncomplicated blue. The wolf was stowed safely wherever Cas kept him 90% of the time. Michael watched him think it through.

“The trickiest part about April’s gameplay,” Cas said eventually, “Is that there are distinct moments when she reveals one hand on purpose in order to distract us from the real machinations that she doesn’t want us to see. That makes tracing the lines of motion all the way back to their source quite a challenge. We don’t see all the motion there is.”

“Then explain what you do know. How much of what happened was you?” It was Michael’s turn to lean forward on his forearms, emboldened by Castiel’s reaction to the questions. “You took me for granted, right? That was you. You saw an opening to get closer to Dean, and you used my attraction to April as a shiny new toy to draw me away from my mate.”

Cas nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. You could see it that way. But it’s not an untruth to say that the webbing between our foursome is falling out into an astoundingly elegant weave wherein each of us gains from what the others leave vacant. You’ve been making good use of the nights I spent alone with Dean nearly from the moment you entered my house. You only seem to balk at the way the connections are forming when you feel they slight you in some way.”

Cas put a placating hand up when Michael sputtered. “All right. We were talking about me. Full confession then. Yes, I wanted a bit more distance from April than a standard True-Mate connection. At first, I believed she was too dependent to allow me that, and I resolved to be the Alpha mate she needed. When the hood came off and I realized the depth and the breadth of her, it was entrancing. I’m sure you can relate. But she and I are very much alike in all the ways that make me uncomfortable, and the shine began to wear off rapidly.”

“Try again, sir. You’re not uncomfortable in your skin. That’s a roleplay for the masses who need to be soothed that the sheep’s clothing your wolf wears is enough to keep the wolf in check. You play the bumbling, awkward social misfit or the assertive, in-control Alpha, but you just showed me those are only play-acts.”

Castiel’s mouth set firmly. “I cannot live permanently in my wolf any more safely than you can in yours, Michael. Could I choose my aspects, I would not choose _this._ And I would NEVER choose it for my Omega mate. She endangers herself at every step. Acceptance of who I am has come to me at a steep price, and I would wish that journey upon no one, not my worst enemy, certainly not my own beloved mate.”

“Beloved.”

Cas rounded on him. “I _DO_ love her, Michael. Never doubt that. But setting her in the primary intimate position, where nature intended her to go, made my skin itch after a time, and it was only getting worse. It was a matter of time before I lost control and took my frustrations out on her. She doesn’t deserve that, and I don’t need the constant pressure against my self-control. I’m only human. What I did, as you so eloquently put it, was to carve a safe path between you and her and to nudge her periodically to take steps along it. And yes, before you remind me, it took blunt force trauma to get me to realize that you and she as a couple are not only inevitable, but the answer to every disconnect we still have as a Pack. What I did was to throw all in to make possible what you and she declared was your most ardent wish. But rather than stand you two face to face and force you to make something declarative out of it, I stood back and allowed you to go at your own pace, silently moving obstacles out of your way and encouraging you where I could. Was there a self-serving motive inside all of that? You’re damned right there was. But I didn’t manipulate you into loving April, nor she you. I watched for signs that she was chafing at the artificial closeness between us as mates as much as I was, and when it presented itself, I moved to bolster her in that direction. I allowed the timing and the degree of the move to be entirely directed by my mate. And if distance from me hadn’t been what she wanted, I would never have suggested it.”

Michael licked his lips. “And what would the two of you have done if I’d refused to play along? Doesn’t this whole scheme-not-a-scheme ride on me being pliable enough to play my role? Did you once stop to think how Dean would feel about being wrenched away from his mate? Does it matter how he feels? He’s the Sub, right? It’s his job to comply. And me, I’m just an Omega. I don’t get a vote at all.”

“Michael…”

“No, you make it sound like you’re nothing but an innocent do-gooder, like the great and glorious benefactor who graces all of us with your generous gift of attention and affection and whatnot, tying our lives up in happy little packages for us. Dean was shook, man! Didn’t see that one coming, did you? It took me hours to reassure him I’m not going anywhere.”

“Of course Dean’s feeling matter!” Cas snapped. “We talked it over for several days after the bomb dropped. He understands now. Dean’s going to be stretched between you and me. There’s no other way, Michael. But between the two of us, the pups, and his work, he’s right where he wants to be. Ask him if you don’t believe me. Ask him.”

Michael sighed and collected himself. He’d already done that, and Cas was right. Dean wasn’t balking at the tension in his strings. He didn’t want any give. He never wanted his feet to touch the ground if they could stop it. Michael’s exhale was slow and deliberate. He placed both palms on the table.

“You should have told me sooner,” he said. “You should have explained what you were waiting for, watching for from Pete. If you wanted me to step in and take her when you were prepared to hand her off, you should’ve just said so. I could have helped. She could have helped.”

“I couldn’t do that,” Cas replied. “Any move from me that so much as hinted at a wish for more space between us, if it hadn’t been reciprocated, would have dealt a damaging blow to our bond. I had to wait for April to move first. Talking to you would only have deepened the degree of manipulative… I couldn’t do that to her. I love her. I don’t ever want her hurt. A mate-rejection pang is said to be nearly unbearable.”

“So you saved her from feeling it, and you shifted it off onto Dean instead.”

“What?” Cas registered real alarm for the first time.

“Yeah. Didn’t he tell you? Felt to him like a dagger in the gut, a real visceral agonizing wrench of a thing that almost buckled his knees. Luckily, I was there to catch him. Or is that my fault too, since I’m his mate after all?”

“When was this?” Cas was frowning deeply. “Michael, when?!”

“On the coach,” Michael told him smugly. “On the way to New York? After you blistered my ass and Dean got the full skinny that he’d be spending the lion’s share of his time with the head lion from now on. Didn’t last long, but his initial reaction was to assume that if you and April were breaking up but for the knotting, that you would expect the same from us, so that you and your husband would match schedules. I felt it through the bonds – both of ‘em. His abdomen clenched right up in this awful agony, kinda like labor pain, and he almost doubled over.”

“No,” Cas muttered. “No, no, no, no, no. Damnit! God-fucking-damnit!” His volume increased accordingly, and Michael sat back with his eyebrows raised.

“You didn’t feel it?”

“I was…distracted, I guess.”

“Alpha,” Michael explained, leaning forward again. “You can’t shift one relationship without upending all of us. You should have said something sooner. Shit runs downhill, and it always lands hardest on the lowest occupant of that precious hierarchy of yours – in this case, on the lowest Sub in the Pack. You set Dean reeling, and there was no way I could’ve stopped it because you didn’t trust me enough to let me in on what was going on with you and April.”

Cas couldn’t think of anything to say. It was classic Michael – oversimplified, but direct and irrefutable.

Michael nodded to himself and the smugness disappeared. “Look, here’s what I want. I want Dean back, just as I had him before, to the extent that it’s practical in light of you two being hitched. I still want a say when you scene with him. Not just notice, mind you. I want the authority to grant or deny permission. And sir? I will deny you permission on occasion just to remind you both that I can. You should be prepared for that. I relieve you of the requirement that he defaults to sleeping in my bed. That rule is fucked anyway since we mostly sleep as a Pack pile as it is. But his wolf is mine to discipline and his Sub is mine to dole out as I see fit.”

Cas let the moment lengthen a bit before nodding. “And April? What are your stipulations for sharing her?”

Michael shrugged. “That’s her call, not mine. She’s not my Sub, sir. I’ll take whatever she has liberty and urge to give me.”

“She said you aren’t interested in marriage,” Cas prompted.

Michael licked his lips. His assurance evaporated and it took his adversarial mindset with it.

“No. At least not right now. Marriage feels artificial to me, Cas. I don’t want to try to jam us into a premade box. I’m not an ape, as you pointed out. I feel like now that you’ve accepted the idea of us, you’re trying to tie all four of us off into a nice, tidy box with a bow – every relationship a mirror image of every other. Just because you and Dean did the fairytale wedding with carriage horses and pixie dust doesn’t mean that’s me. Or Pete. We’re Omegas, and that touches everything we do. Maybe you can’t understand this, but the last thing either of us needs is another set of rules and limitations mandating our every move.”

“Yes,” Cas replied carefully. “Yes, I see. That makes a lot of sense to me, actually. So where does that leave your relationship?”

“You know,” Michael said getting slowly out of his chair and stepping slowly down the long line of the reading table, not looking at his Alpha. “Keeping in mind everything you made clear to me about Alphas and Pack Hierarchy and all that, it seems to me that as long as April isn’t endangered by our relationship, that how we choose to pursue it is maybe something we should have leave to keep private.”

Cas laughed, and Michael turned his head to check if it was a genuine laugh or the prelude to a beheading. 

“Well said, Michael,” Cas told him. “I need to know the basics of course. She is my mate and a Pack Omega, both.”

“We’re dating, sir,” Michael shot back. He braced himself on the table upon his fingertips with his fingers splayed wide. “We’re sexually involved, but not scening.”

“I know that much,” Cas replied impatiently.

“I consider myself ‘hers’ in every sense of the word that’s available,” Michael went on. “And I consider every part of her she can spare apart from you as ‘mine’. Dean’s not the only one stretched thin here. I intend to make a real go of this, Cas. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, and I’m scared shitless. Wolves aren’t built for this. It’s like I’m in blinders. I can’t see or feel anything from her except through her eyes, and she hides shit as often as she shows it.”

Castiel’s heart melted a bit. His blue eyes, already canted in form to have a sympathetic lien, softened, and he caught Michael’s eye, watching the Omega flail a bit before reaching for his Alpha.

“I will help however I can, Michael,” he promised. “This is not a manipulation, you understand. I won’t spy on my mate for you nor feed you insights into her emotions. You need to settle that conundrum for yourself. But I will support you both. If you cannot bring yourself to Claim her, your progress will be slow and cumbersome. You can take courage in the knowledge that millions of Primates form lasting relationships with one another every day without any type of metaphysical bond guiding them. It can be done.”

“How do they know though?” Michael blurted, revealing his touchiest fear. “How do they know for sure that their partner is as much in love as they are? How do they trust day in and day out when they can’t feel it?”

“I don’t know,” Cas admitted. “But I know that they do trust, that they do find ways to communicate what they feel for each other in ways their partner can hear. I watched Fred fall in love and build a life with a man he trusts with his life. I can’t fathom it, Michael, but there it is.”

Michael was shaking his head before Cas finished speaking. “No, it’s too much expectation to put on Pete. I can’t ask her to take it on faith forever. I promised her I’d build us a bond we can use as a starting point. I need to keep that promise.” He sighed heavily and turned lost eyes on Castiel. “How do I do this? I can’t give her to my wolf. He’ll devour everything beautiful about her, about us.”

“Michael have you confronted April yet about her part in this mess that set you and Dean back on your heels?”

Michael’s face flattened. “You want me to pick a fight with her and ride it to completion, don’t you? That’s what you would do.”

“I’m suggesting that you clear the air between the two of you.”

“We’re not at odds,” Michael protested.

Cas begged to differ. “You’ve been walking on eggshells since we returned from New York, afraid perhaps, that getting down to real talk would mar her beautiful victory there and tarnish the memories a bit. Whatever the reason, you’re both being supremely and artificially polite to each other. There’s nothing real about whatever you’re both doing right now. I’m suggesting you take the kid gloves off, stop worrying that she’ll stop loving you if you show her the real you, and get yourselves straightened out. Don’t forget, it was the real you she fell for in the first place, and a rather unflattering version at that.” Michael moved to interrupt but Cas held up a finger to stop him, and he continued. “And if you both work from instinctive places in your psyches, you may find that the situation resolves itself with little planning and no hand-wringing.”

“I’m just not seeing it, man.”

“Or,” Cas said, grunting a little as he stood up. “You can keep dancing around each other and setting sparks off in all directions. Dean and I will keep cleaning up the spills until we weary of it and find a way to resolve the tension that neither of you will enjoy.”

“Great. Thanks for that. I really needed even more pressure.”

Cas chuckled. “You work well under pressure. And word to the wise, if you don’t want me involved, keep it out from under my nose. Come on. You have an anatomy exam in the morning, and I’ve yet to hear your drill of the subject. I assume your notes are in your office?”

“Oh, come on!” Michael moaned.

“March, Omega. Show me how many hours I need to set aside for your studying tonight.”

“Yes, Papa,” Michael grumbled.

Cas laughed again. “And that brings your tally to four. Let’s see, five swats per tally, that’s…hmm…that’s twenty swats. How about we settle up before dinner?”

Michael managed to divert the scathing look that was forming on his face in the nick of time, but he didn’t stop his gripe. “I thought you were going to be spending more time with Dean.”

“That’s five, Michael. You might consider shutting up soon.”

***************

Castiel did his best to put Billie and Michael out of his head as he scoured the side streets and alleys through the window of the back seat of his town car. Billie had all but slapped him before huffing off to type up her decisions in her own space, a wide-eyed Jonathon towed along behind her. And Michael’s dourness lasted all the way through dinner, earning him an early and lonely bedtime with his anatomy notes.

It was often a tough role when a hard nose was required, especially when Cas longed to wrap them all up in his arms and whisper gentle words to them. Today, more than most days, Cas felt pulled into two distinct parts. He hadn’t been overplaying his brutal side when he showed his hand to Michael. And that scheme was tame compared with what Castiel was capable of at his most inspired. But it was high time Michael saw him fully for what he was. If nothing else, it would stop the Omega from constantly second guessing his own instincts where the Alpha was concerned. Michael had himself half-believing things about Cas’ capabilities that would take superheroic powers to achieve, and at the same time, he talked himself into vouching for the Alpha’s innocence in times when doing so took monumental mental gymnastics.

Better that he knew the simple truths which were at once far more dastardly and far more mundane that what Michael had built him up to in his head.

A burnt-out streetlight at an alleyway they passed offered Cas an insufficient look down the length, and he rapped on his window and flashed Jack a signal to round the block and give it another drive by.

Beside him in the back seat, Dean read his mood, apparently, and chose not to ignore it. Dean touched his thigh with a knuckle.

“Someone’s cranky,” Dean remarked lightly. “What’s on your mind, man? Still riled about Michael?”

“No.”

Cas let it stop there. He focused out the window, searching the darkness closely for his target. Dean should be doing the same from his side.

“Cas?”

“Pay attention, Dean.”

“Yessir,” Dean mumbled, turning back to scan out his window. 

It wasn’t that Cas _wanted_ to be a dick. It’s just that, very often, being a dick was his best option, and it fed the beast inside him as well. If he was honest with himself, a big part of him _WAS_ just that dickish, and his foul mood reflected the confluence of moments where his soft nurturing side had no choice but to acknowledge it was secondary to a … well, to a dick.

If only the dickish side would show the slightest touch of remorse, but Cas knew better than that. He was his father’s son as much as his mother’s. There was no place for remorse when you’re Alpha. Remorse was what underlings felt. And if they didn’t, they were corrected until they did.

Cas wanted it to be otherwise, but it wasn’t. It was the curse of the hierarchy. He couldn’t show weakness like that, not when a moment was fraught. It was the cold line of his unmovable brow that held it all together, and it was Castiel’s burden to carry – both that he must do what he must do and that he privately loved every moment of it.

They circled back around. The alley was still too dark, but Cas caught a trace of movement.

“Slow down and park on the opposite side of the street. Hold there.” He instructed coldly.

Jack followed his instruction. Dean shot him a quizzical look.

“You sure?” asked Adam from the front passenger seat.

“No, but let’s give it a minute. Be ready.”

They all fell still and silent save for the sounds of breathing and an occasional shuffle of fabric as someone adjusted. With the four of them looking, they would spot one of the twins if they were here. It was prime time and a perfect locale, and Cas was tired of waiting for one of them to bite his baited hook in person. If they were going to take the offer, they would’ve done so by now.

“There she is.”

“Where?

“Eleven o’clock. Heading this way. Gonna pass right by us.”

“Have you got her, Dean?”

“I’ve got her. You guys take care. I’ll call Sam when I’m ready for a ride.” He waited for the young woman to pass the car, and then he slipped quietly out and took up her tail, thankful for the silent catch of his husband’s expensive luxury car. Dean’s Baby would’ve creaked like a banshee upon opening and slammed like a prison cell when he closed her, no matter how much he lubed her joints.

He felt eyes on his back until he disappeared around the corner. He could still feel his mate brooding in his bed at home, studying his flash cards in preparation for tomorrow’s exam. If Michael’s courses went well, he might be out scouting like this someday in the not-so-distant future, and the thought put Dean right back to work. Everything they cleaned up now meant less for Michael to have to face later.

Dean knew it was an irrational belief, but he growled softly anyway and slipped into a doorway when the woman subtly checked her six. 

Cas checked that the door had closed securely, then he concentrated on the mouth of the alley across the street. 

“Is there a postal box in that alley?” he asked, squinting. “It looks like someone’s sitting on something about that height, swinging a leg, maybe. Something’s moving, but I can’t make it out.”

“You wanna drive down it?”

“Yes. Take it slowly.”

The car rounded the block again in order to approach the alley correctly, and Cas narrowed his eyes as the darkness resolved into dim light. It was a power box, about three feet high, and the young man sitting obscenely on top of it had one heel dug in against his butt and the other swinging out over the edge, his knees spread grotesquely wide and his cowboy boots signaling a playful attitude. The kid was asking for it in every way but in lettering three feet high. His short blue jean cutoffs framed his small package, making Cas wince at the tightness that had to be binding.

He was cocky and adorable, and he looked ripe enough to pluck straight from the vine, even down to the shade of a wet stain that barely showed between his legs where he leaned back on his tailbone enticingly.

As open as he was, Cas could nearly have fucked him from the car.

“Showtime,” whispered Adam. “That’s him all right.”

“Yes. Leave the talking to me,” Cas replied.

The car pulled up in front of the box slowly, telegraphing its intentions, but it didn’t stop completely until the window of the back seat was flush with the box. Cas studied the boy from behind tinted windows. The kid couldn’t see him, but he knew he was on, so he smirked cheekily and leaned back just a bit to flash the stain below his crotch. Castiel’s body responded, but he ignore it. The kid was chewing gum aggressively, a tell maybe, that he wasn’t as self-assured as he looked.

Castiel activated the window, lowering it about five inches. He stayed back far enough that the boy’s line of sight wouldn’t give him more than the hint of a jawline.

“Howdy, mister.”

Cas didn’t answer. He turned his head subtly, letting the boy know he’d heard the presumptuous greeting. People told him most Omegas could spot an alpha even if they had no more than the briefest of glimpses, and Cas had found it to be true, by and large. Something about his mannerism caught the kid. He sat up straight, leaning closer and whiffing the air with his nose.

“You, uh, looking for something, sir?” he tried. “Need directions to, um, the better side of town, maybe? You lost?”

“I’m not lost, no,” Castiel answered shortly, turning his head so that the boy knew he was being inspected. He sat up a little straighter still, pulling his knees unconsciously closer and running his hands down his elaborate vest to straighten it.

“Well, then, uh…” He licked his lips. “What _are_ you looking for? I might be able to direct you. I know these parts pretty good.”

“Pretty _well,_” Cas corrected.

“Who are you, my grammar teacher?” the kid said with a huff of disbelief.

“Who do you need me to be?” Cas answered glibly, lowering his voice to connect with the Omega outside of their surface pleasantries.

“Oooh! Shivers, dude. That was good. Say ‘Mufasa’!”

“Get off the box and open the door. I want to talk to you.”

“Oookaay.” He slid forward but hesitated to drop to the ground. He was smart and wary, attuned to the dangers of the world, and his eyes went everywhere. His nostrils flared, seeking a scent from inside the car. Cas hadn’t tried masking any of their scents, and if the kid could smell him, so be it. 

“Well?”

“You know this is dangerous, what you’re doing right now, don’t you?” the boy joked bracingly. “I could be a maniacal hatchet murderer. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“I know that you’re in pre-Heat and you don’t have a hatchet at the moment. I think I’ll take my chances.”

“Pre-Heat. Huh. Who talks like that? Dude, you need to lighten up a little and learn to play some. I could give you some pointers.” He moved a few millimeters closer to the edge.

“Are you this hesitant with everyone who propositions you?” Cas asked pointedly, letting a touch of exasperation into his voice.

“Only the ones who come off as cops,” the boy shot back.

“Cops don’t drive expensive vehicles, son. Now, get down and open the door. You may keep your feet on the ground if you like. No one is going to touch you without your permission.”

He obeyed without thinking, and a brief flash of disbelief crossed his face before he plastered a simper back on. He stood in the door of the car, bent down and keeping far enough back that he’d have a good chance of escaping if someone inside made a grab for him.

“So, what can I do for a rich and pretty alpha tonight? You know, my mouth is good for far more interesting things than talking.”

“Be that as it may, and I do believe you, talking is all I have planned for tonight. Would you feel safe enough to get in and ride with me while we talk?”

“For free?! Not a chance. Look, if you’re not taking this anywhere, would you mind clearing out? You’re scaring off the regulars.”

“You don’t have any regulars on Wednesdays, Max. Get in the car. I’ll pay your going rate and then some.”

“How do you know my name? Who are you?” Max backed up a couple of steps, but he didn’t run. The promise of a fare, and a virtually free one at that, was too good to pass up if it was on the level. “Show me the cash.”

Cas leaned forward so that the Omega could see his face.

“Get in the car, Max. We need to talk about your sister and your mother.”

Max’s mouth dropped open and he stumbled backward again, pointing. “I know you.”

“Yes, and you know me well enough by reputation to know that I have one to protect. You’ve been in far more dangerous waters than this one, Omega. Come ride with me. I promise to deliver you safely wherever you want to go and to compensate you for your lost revenue.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh, no you don’t! Not that again! I told those leeches I don’t work for anyone.”

“I’m not a pimp, Max. It’s a bona fide offer of employment, and you would be wise to listen to what I have to say before you cut your nose off to spite your face.”

Max’s body rolled of a piece as he rolled his eyes. It was a beautiful melodrama, and Cas was impressed with his commitment to it, but he was unfazed by the theatrics. “Get in the car, Max. I dislike speaking through a car door.”

Max left his body limp as he shuffled up and slid onto the bench seat beside the Alpha. Cas knew he wasn’t as lax as he appeared. He couldn’t afford to be.

“Thank you.”

“You know,” said the Omega as he pulled the door shut. “You’re talking to the wrong Banes. I’m Omega, or didn’t you notice? I don’t call the shots.”

“Understood,” Cas acknowledged with a nod to Jack to drive on. “That’s why we’ve got someone else speaking to your sister right now. And speaking of shots…”

“What have you done with Alicia?!” The door had locked and Max was trapped as the car made its way to the interstate where it could hit speeds too fast to bail from even if he picked the lock. “Where are you taking me?!”

“Nothing’s changed, Max,” Cas told him calmly. “You’re not being kidnapped. We’re just having a conversation. No one is harming your sister. Please calm down.”

“How do you know anything about my family?”

“I’ll tell you if you’ll calm down and stop jumping to conclusions. Look, here’s the money I promised. It’s yours, no questions asked. I’m not going to ask for anything in return except a chat. At the end, we’ll take you anywhere you say, and you keep the money regardless.”

“Who’s driving?” Max demanded. Every line of his body told the truth now. The kid was way out of his comfort zone and terrified. “I smell another alpha.”

“The _beta_ behind the wheel is Jack. He’s an Omega Services Coordinator who works for me. Beside him is Adam, an Ozzie Contractor, who also works for me. The alpha scent you smell aside from my own is my husband, Dean. He’s the one who’s looking for your twin, and he’s planning to have a similar chat with Alicia to the one we’re having here. Now…If I may continue?”

Max blinked owlishly, fisting the money as if Cas was going to snatch it back, and he pressed his knees tightly together. Eventually, he nodded.

“Good. Very good. All right. As I was saying, speaking of shots, we know about your mother’s condition, Max, and we want to help. Diabetes is rare in Canids, but it’s all the more deadly because there isn’t as much research into the Lupine form as there is for Primates. Your mother needs medical care that she isn’t getting, and she’s succumbing to the disease before your eyes. Am I right?”

“How do you know that?”

“You and I are in a perfect condition at the moment to help one another. Now, I can offer your mother my services as a physician. I can pay for her medications myself. But what she really needs is an insurance policy that covers her head to foot, as do you and your sister.”

“This is extortion! I knew you were shady! You _ARE_ a pimp!”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. I help arrange sexual experiences for individuals who do not have access to the experiences their designations require in their private lives. The difference, Max, is that I do so out in the open, under state and federal regulations that protect my workers and my clients, both. I offer a pay rate that far exceeds what you make on the street, and I offer a retirement plan and medical insurance for you and your dependents.”

“It’s a trap,” he exclaimed, causing a quickly stifled guffaw from Jack.

“Sorry,” Jack mumbled. “Admiral Akbar flashback.”

“Max, we’ve been advertising for professionals like you for months and have been baffled that there’s virtually no response at all. Perhaps you can explain your fears. Yours and the others’? What kind of a trap could this possibly be? You’re a professional, and you’re good at what you do. No one’s judging you unfairly. Don’t you long to turn tricks in a safe space? Safe from disease, from assault, from unwanted pregnancy, from legal entanglements? Wouldn’t you love to let go of the synthetic Heat-simulating drugs and give your body a rest? Explain it to me. What are you all so afraid of that living hand to mouth and watching your mother’s health fail is better?”

“Easy, Alpha,” Adam soothed. “Give the guy a chance to catch his breath.”

Cas huffed and scooted further away, turning to watch the landscape slide by outside.

Adam rotated in his seat and made a frustrated face. He glanced at Castiel and then turned to address the hooker in Castiel’s backseat. 

“Look, Max. You don’t know us. You know him by sight, but most of what you’ve heard about what we do is secondhand and overblown. Maybe if you explain what you’re concerned about, I can help you. I’ve been doing this for years now. I’m just like you, Max, but I have a safe, clean apartment of my own and a tax bracket. It’s not Utopia, but it’s a lot better than taking my chances on the street. I’ll answer anything.”

“Why me?” the Omega asked. “Why not take all those pretty young recruits from the trade schools?”

Adam released a slow breath. “Frankly,” he said, “because the industry is too new to have good schools going yet. It takes experience to make a good Contractor. No amount of training can make up for a lack of experience. And I say that carefully, because Alpha there, he runs one of the training schools. It’s like telling your own dad he’s shit at fixing cars. But, man, truth is truth. The new grads are too green, and we need numbers. We need Omegas, like, yesterday. We need professionals, Max. People like you. People who know which end is which.”

“That doesn’t answer the question, why me,” he pointed out. “You researched my family, targeted me and my sister at the same time. You didn’t just go after professionals walking the street. You went after _me._ Why?”

“Because you’re the best,” Jack put in with his eyes on the rearview mirror to catch Max’s striking green gaze. “And the others look up to you. We’re thinking that where you and your sister go, the trade will follow. We need more than a couple, Max. We need all of you. And quite frankly, like it or not, you need us.”

“The hell I do.”

“What exactly do you envision a contractor’s experience is, institutionally?” Cas asked. “Help me understand.”

“Why should I?”

Cas didn’t answer, but he tilted his head, goading the boy to answer for himself.

“Are you going to help my mother?”

Cas sighed. “Tasha Banes, Type II diabetes, untreated, neurologic effects beginning to present. Yes, Max. Regardless of your answer this evening, I will do everything I can for your mother. But you need to understand, there is a limit to what I can offer personally. She needs specialists. She needs holistic care. She needs insurance.”

“You’re going to turn me into some kind of automaton,” Max blurted. “I’ll have a stupid script, and I’ll get lashed if I deviate. I’ve heard the stories! I work for myself and my family, and I decide how I work, when I work. I say NO when I get the wrong feel from some skeevy dude. No one, and I mean NO ONE controls me but me!”

“And Alicia,” Adam put in quietly.

“Hey, FUCK YOU! You don’t know my life!”

“No, goddamnit, but I know what it could be,” Adam shot right back. “You’re pissed at all the wrong people, man. We’re the good guys…”

“Oh, really!? Like the asshat alpha who took the state’s money to look after me and then hightailed it to Cameroon? He was the ‘good guys’ too, or didn’t your dossier on me mention that?”

“We know about your alpha, Max,” Castiel said smoothly. “You got a raw deal there, and you’ve managed magnificently on your own. No one’s going to force you to be something you’re not. That’s really the whole point to what we do. We might need you to stretch yourself from time to time to accommodate a rare affinity, but we’ll never force you into contact with anyone, not least of which, someone who smells skeevy to you. Every single client will be your choice. We offer training to give you tools that you don’t currently have, tools to protect yourself, to head off unsafe situations before anyone is even close to harmed. You would never, ever need to climb into the car of an alpha you don’t know. Not ever. Do you hear me, Omega? You put on a brave face just now, and you saw it through because you really don’t have a choice if you’re going to keep food on the table and emergency funds under the mattress. But none of it - _NONE OF IT_ \- is necessary. There’s a safe way to be your own boss.”

Max scoffed.

“It’s true,” Adam told him with his eyes locked straight into the wary Omega’s. “No one tells me how to run my room. I sign my own scene contracts. I have full say on the green list. No one does anything to me that I don’t agree to. I’ve kicked plenty of alpha-Dominants out on their well-bred asses, and I’ve safeworded over nothing more than a suspicion. I’ve never tested positive for an STD, and I’ve never missed a cycle or had to take synthetic anything – not the suppressants, not the faux-Heat shit, not the weird-ass pheromone scents you buy at the corner gas station. And I’ve never popped up unexpectedly pregnant.”

“Well, goody for you,” Max grumbled, but his defenses were weakening. Cas could see him sinking deeper into the plush cushioning of the back seat as his wolf sensed safety and began to unfurl. “They beat your ass. Or are you gonna try to snow me on that too?”

“Uh, yeah. About that,” Adam faltered a little and looked to Jack.

Jack looked over the seat briefly before turning back to driving. “Dude, you’re not a pup. You know how it works. No one’s _beating_ anyone unless that’s what they paid for. Yeah, you’ll be spanked when it’s the right call for you in the moment. It’s all monitored, man. It’s safe. They’re careful and deliberate. It’s not like the movies at all.”

“I don’t think that’s helping much, Jack,” Adam said. “I don’t think he has any frame of reference to guide him.” Adam kept his eyes on Max’s face as the kid blushed and averted his eyes out the window. The bills were still clutched in his hand, and he distracted himself with counting them – twice – and then folding them in shaky hands and tucking them into the minute front pocket of his jean shorts.

Cas noticed that his legs were sporting chill bumps down both thighs, and he reached to the console between them to adjust the air. When he spoke, it was the gentlest Max had heard from an alpha, possibly in his life, and he froze in near panic at the uncertainty it engendered.

“Max, you scene with your current clients, correct? It’s not just sex you offer; it’s the full gamut of necessary services. You offer a full menu. I know this because your scent tells me that you’re fully Balanced in your Secondary aspect, and your mannerisms tell me that you’re well-fed in your Tertiary. That only happens when you’re getting seen to yourself. I suspect you have a few special favorites among your clientele that you would sorely…excuse the pun…miss if you were to up and vanish on them. Let’s don’t lie to each other. I swear to be truthful with you, but I expect the same in return. You don’t fear impact play. You use it as carefully as we do. What you fear is abuse. Let me clarify. We do not abuse our employees or our clients. If you’ve experienced impact scenes that were done correctly and, as I suspect, you’ve experienced those done badly, then you know the difference between Release and abuse. I expect you to hold on to that measuring stick for the rest of your life and use it every time anyone holds an implement of impact over you. If you ever doubt where your experience falls in relation to that stick, then you call RED at the top of your lungs. If you do that even once in our Facility, you’ll understand what we’re really offering you, and you’ll be a convert for life.”

“Where are we going?” Max asked again, surreptitiously scrubbing his eye with the back of his arm and hiding a sniffle.

“We’re going for a tour of The Facility,” Cas told him calmly. “No one will make you go in. Max, it took a great deal of courage for you to get into this car, but you put up only a token resistance. You’ve had to roll the dice on your safety and your sister’s your whole adult life. If you’ll make one more gamble, I believe you can leave all of that behind you.”

“Or? If I refuse?”

“Then Jack here will take you home or wherever you wish to go. He’ll take you right back to that alley to finish your evening of waiting in the dark if that’s what you want. But he’ll talk your ear off the whole way home about how useful it can be to let an Omega Services Coordinator help you out of some of your stickier situations, and he’s not going to leave you alone until he’s certain you’re signed up with an alpha you can trust not to abscond with the state fee.”

“What does a prostitute need with a custodial alpha?” Max asked sourly. “You think one more round of fucking and paddling per month is gonna make any difference to me? It’s just another lay, _Sir._”

“Max, you don’t need to call me ‘Sir’. I’m not your employer, your teacher, your parent, your Dominant, or your alpha. We’re equals in this car as far as we can be. No, Max, the custodial alpha, for someone as well-tended as you, is mostly there to see you safely through your Heats and to verify that you’re safe and healthy outside of the Heats. I’m sure you’re aware that it’s exceedingly dangerous to work while you’re in-cycle. I don’t need to tell you the dangers, I’m sure.”

Max snorted then went quiet. Tellingly quiet. He blinked several times. He shook his head at his own internal dialogue. He huffed.

“Alicia won’t go for it,” he said. “She’s even more stubborn than I am, and she’s beta. I’m just Omega. It’s not my call, Alpha. She’s family. It’s her call in the end. You’re wasting your time.”

“You might be surprised, but she and my husband are right behind us. They’ve been following for a while.”

“What?” Max spun around and spotted his sister at the wheel of her old beater with the famous alpha riding shotgun beside her. She caught his eye and offered a baleful finger-wave. Dean grinned stupidly beside her. “She’s…she’s only following because you kidnapped me, and she’s gonna rip me a new one for getting in this car!”

“Not according to the texts Dean’s sent me. Apparently, she’s ready to give the grand tour a chance.” Cas had a smugness about his voice that made Max’s lip curl. “What do you say, Maximillian? Are you ready to do something really brave?”

“You’re just going to assign us a room and turn us loose to run our business from here?”

“Oh, no,” Adam told him. “You’ve got to go through the training and certification courses first. But don’t worry, experienced pros never have any trouble with that. You’ll breeze through.”

“And what happens to my clients in the meantime?” Max asked, finally switching to speaking about the process as a potential fact rather than a proposal that was headed for the scrap heap. Cas noted the degree to which the Omega put stock in his sister’s opinion. That could be useful down the line.

“If they can find you on a mailbox in an unlit back alley, they can find their way to us,” Jack told him confidently. “A simple word from you, and I believe most of them will be easy to flip from the shady side to the legal side. You’re too healthy to have a business book full of the dregs of humanity, Max. You strike me as a top notch business man and a right good judge of people. Talk to your clients. Give us their names. We’ll mark them as they come in, discount them while they wait for you to come out of the other end of training, and then we’ll return your business book, fully intact, and you’ll have a whole roster of support at your back. It really is the best of both worlds.”

“If it doesn’t work out,” Max squinted at the building as Jack turned into the parking lot. “I’ll lose my best spot to some other prick.”

“C’mon, Max, that’s not a lot at stake when you think about what you’ve got to gain.”

“It’s time to come in out of the cold, Omega,” Cas told him prophetically. “And I’m hopeful that where you and Alicia go, others will follow. In fact, if you’re a betting man, I’m willing to wager $100 on my part versus an extra week as a fluffer on yours that this time next year, there won’t be more than two of your colleagues still on the streets of K.C., unaffiliated with the ACRI Facility.”

“What does a week’s worth of fluffing look like?” Max asked, following Castiel out of the car.

“Use your imagination,” Cas told him playfully back.

***************

“Wow, Cas, no wonder he’s pissy. Just laid it right out for him, did you? Did you really say, ‘I get more than you do, get over it’?”

“More or less,” Cas mumbled as he scrolled through his schedule on his tablet. He had his knees pulled up under the cushy white comforter, his back braced against a pillow, his brow furrowed in thought as he juggled appointments and commitments.

“And how’d he take it?” Dean crawled the length of the bed in a worn pair of sleep pants that rode low on his hips. “What’d he say?”

Cas spared him a glance as Dean approached, a glance that turned into an appreciative ogle. He let Dean ease the tablet out of his hands, enjoying the play of muscles over his ribs and shoulders as he stretched to set it on the bedside table, a move that left his torso draped across Castiel’s.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Heya, Cas.” Dean dropped a series of kisses along Cas’ clavicle before laying his head on his husband’s chest. Castiel’s right arm came up around Dean’s bare back. He trailed fingertips easily across the smooth expanse of his back, and he bent his head to leave a kiss in Dean’s hair.

“He wasn’t surprised, I don’t think,” Cas replied. “Disappointed a bit, maybe. I believe he’s been imagining that I have a network of operatives around every corner who spy for me. He’d talked himself into believing I’m the root of all nefarious outcomes with a set of superpowers far exceeding what I can really accomplish. It was an oddly backwards hero complex.”

“So you popped his bubble by confirming his suspicions?” Dean asked in confusion. “I mean, you do have a network of operatives, and you are at the root of all kinds of shit. You basically confirmed his worst fears and told him to get used to being used. How was that supposed to help?”

Cas chuckled, bouncing Dean’s head gently. “I’m weary of the constant faux-outrage. Michael benefits personally from the style of management I provide. I’m tired of being confronted with indignation when what we do in this Pack works, and he takes advantage of it whenever it suits him. We can’t have omelets if we never crack any eggs, and all of us enjoy omelets. He wanted to know how the sausage is made, so I showed him. He already knew most of it, but it was important for me to impress upon him that I’m not going to keep apologizing for actions that I’m not remorseful about. If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Michael needs to come to terms with his place in this Pack. His and mine. We aren’t equals, Dean. I don’t owe him an explanation.”

“Whew, that’s hot,” Dean murmured.

“Yeah? How hot?” 

Cas craned his neck to look down, spreading his knees beneath the blankets to bracket Dean’s hips and center him. Dean propped his chin on Cas’ sternum. He wrapped his arms up under Castiel’s shoulders and hoisted himself up until he was looking down into soft blue eyes.

“You turn me on, Alpha.” Dean clambered his knees up under himself and followed that pronouncement with an exploratory touching of lips. The tip of his tongue traced the line of Cas’ bottom lip as his hips ground in a dirty circle above Castiel’s. Cas opened a space between his lips and reached for Dean with tongue, with arms, with an answering grind of hips. Shoulder muscles rolled as Dean pulled himself closer, tighter, a groan of pleasure slipping between them that could have come from either man.

Cas rolled them, tangling the comforter. Dean whimpered and held on. Kissing Cas was like drowning in perfect bliss. He couldn’t breathe, but he never wanted to stop. He felt hands in his hair, at his temples. He felt knees bracketing his hips. There were layers and layers of fabrics between their groins, but their mouths found each other, and that was all that mattered.

“Cas…”

“Shhh.”

Dean’s eyes were closed. He could feel every point of pressure and every touch of warmth. Cas kissed his eyelids, one by one. He kissed down from temple to jaw before delving back into his mouth, so welcoming, so hot and wet. Dean was encased in the bedding now, wrapped tightly, bound from the waist down, while Cas had essentially freed himself with the flipping of positions.

“Want you…”

“I’m here, Dean. Shhh.”

Cas sat up, straddling Dean with a knee on each side of Dean’s hips. The last of the covers slipped free of his back and his hips. He was gloriously nude. He smiled down at Dean with a sappy, hooded bedroom expression that would make them millions if they could bottle it. One thumb caressed Dean’s jaw.

With a tilt to his head and a thoughtful pause, Cas broke the silence and the enchanted moment. “It was you Michael was most incensed about, you know. He said that you took the brunt of the fallout from my rift with April.”

“Oh, jeez. Not that again. Cas, I’m fine. It was a miscommunication. It lasted all of three nanoseconds. My thought pattern went to a dark place for a sec, like it does sometimes, and it kicked me in the gut. But it was wrong, and I’m fine.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Can we fuck now?”

“Hmm.” Cas pursed his lips and scooted backward until his face lowered and he had good access to Dean’s bare chest. “Not tonight, love. Michael made a good point. Every time I stretch you open, I return you to him a little worse for wear.”

“Now I’m a used sweatshirt?”

Cas continued as if Dean hadn’t spoken. “I’m not going to inhibit myself for his sake all the time, but for now, as a show of faith, let’s refrain from making you limp into your scene with him tomorrow night. He’s had a lovely idea, and I expect you’ll enjoy it more if you’re pristine at the outset.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Why don’t you just relax and let me worship you, my love?”

“Oh, well, now you’re talkin’.”

“Good.” Cas climbed off the bed and dug through his bureau drawer for a bottle of lightly scented massage oil. “Pants off. Lay down on top of the comforter of your belly.”

Dean worked his way out of the burrito of blankets around his middle and slipped his pants off, dropping them over the side of the bed. “You can’t get to my dick if I’m on my belly,” he pointed out. “You sure about this?”

“Shut up and lie down,” Cas said.

Dean grinned, tugged the blankets up to a smooth surface again, and then threw himself down with enough gusto to bounce a little. He settled with his cheek resting on crossed arms, his eyes barely open. Soon, the warmth of Castiel’s bare thighs straddled his own, and he felt those angelic hands smooth across the planes of his back, pressing in with thumbs and heels, turning to knuckle along a braided muscle. Dean melted on a loud groan.

“Jesus fuck, your hands…”

“Mmm, yes, they are very fond of your body, Dean. They know every curve, every rise, every dip. My hands know you so intimately, they could sculpt your shape from clay in the dark by feel alone. I am a very lucky man.” He ran his hands down Dean’s torso, curving around his ribs, to dip into the small of his back and round over his perfect ass until they ran up against Castiel’s spread thighs, and then he reversed and pressed upward again, earning him another moan from the prostrate man below him.

He massaged until Dean’s back was warm and pink, soft in the lamplight, shadowed and elegant, a sublime art piece of curvature and mass. His thumbs worked up along Dean’s neck, into his hair at the back of Dean’s head, out across each shoulder. Castiel’s soft cock sat loose against Dean’s inner thigh, pressing forward every now and then as Cas moved over his lover, a tease of motion that sent chill bumps across Dean’s thighs. Dean began to float softly, not a Sub response, just a gentle cradling by a sea of endorphins and trust.

“I’m very sorry that you experienced a mate-rejection cramp as a result of April and I finding our balance, Dean. I’m sure you’re aware that wasn’t an intended consequence, but I apologize that it happened at all, that I didn’t anticipate that you or Michael might interpret the shift as having a wider impact on your Mated relationship than I expected. That was my fault, love, and I’m sorry.” Cas kept his voice low and his hands in motion, kneading into the meat of Dean’s butt and around each hip, down into the tops of his thighs. He shuffled his seat backward to give him better access.

“You couldn’t have anticipated that, man. S’not your fault.”

“Michael said I was cavalier in my decision to take whatever I want and let the chips fall where they may for the rest of you. He was right, Dean, and I’m sorry.”

With Cas sitting on Dean’s calves now, Dean had the freedom to press up onto his elbows and look back over his shoulder. “And you were supposed to…what? Live your whole life tied to a mate you don’t jibe with? Come on, Cas. Something had to give. Maybe you could have been better with the head’s ups, but maybe not. You didn’t know when the tension was gonna break, and you didn’t want to divulge private stuff that was nobody’s business but yours and April’s. That rope’s been getting tighter and tighter since you two Mated. It was gonna pop eventually. It had to. But it could have been weeks, months, could have been years before it snapped. You’re not omniscient.”

Castiel’s hands stroked down each thigh over and over, the slide eased by soothing oil, his fingers seeking muscle knots and homing in whenever they found one. Dean grimaced at a particularly troublesome knot that Cas determined to untangle.

“I hoped stating my position to Michael might clarify things for us, but I’m not sure that’s going to be the result.”

Dean chuckled and collapsed back into his arms, crossed on the pillow. “Yeaah, he’s good at busting bubbles. Makes you feel naked and weighed, doesn’t he? He’s not an easy man to be a hypocrite around.”

“No. He’s not.”

“He’ll be fine, Cas. _We’ll_ be fine. He’ll figure it out. Give him a little time. He’s naïve, and he needed you to be perfect, or…thought he did. He _wanted_ you to be perfect, anyway.”

“Hmm. And what about you, Dean? Are you okay with me as I am, imperfect and hypocritical?”

Dean rolled over onto his back. Cas lifted onto his knees to let Dean’s shins settle beneath him, and he fell forward onto his hands so that he was bracketing his husband’s body.

“I told you, Alpha,” Dean said with his eyes glistening with fervor, and his hands pulled high to stroke the soft dark strands of Castiel’s freshly washed hair. “I love you exactly as you are. I love that you try like hell to make a space for everyone that honors their humanity. I love that you are unapologetically powerful, that you found a way to marry a nurturer with a Viking, and you look at every day as a new chance to make something new and great in the world that’s never been there before; that you drag the rest of us along into that new vista with you. I love that you’re a _wolf_, Castiel James. You don’t owe my mate any apologies or explanations, and you don’t owe one to me either. Sometimes you’re gonna need to throw your weight around, and I know you don’t actually feel guilty about that. You don’t have to pretend to feel guilty when you’re home, baby. That’s your parents talking in your head. That’s the ape’s society, not ours.”

Cas sighed and closed his eyes.

“Hey.” Dean nudged his jaw with a knuckle. “Michael’s only got two phases, man. He’s either ‘Everybody’s Mama’ or he’s ‘Wet Cat’. Let him hiss and spit himself out for a while. He’ll come round. He’s wrong about this. Wrong about you. You’re Alpha, Castiel, and if you don’t act like it, none of us are safe.”

Cas kissed him, softly at first, but it soon grew heated. Both men were panting, gasping for breath when they broke apart. 

“Are we done sharing our feelings now?” Dean asked breathlessly. “Cause I really need your mouth on me or I’m gonna explode.”

Cas smirked and pulled backward once more until he had a good angle on Dean’s cock. He looked down at it, pausing slightly. Dean wiggled his hips. 

“Your backside is a lovely and unblemished shade of pink, sweetheart,” Cas observed with his eyes on Dean’s half-hard dick. “Do enjoy that while it lasts.”

“Bring it, big man,” Dean teased back, and then he gasped as Castiel closed his lips around the head of Dean’s cock. One hand circled Dean’s soft knot and the other pressed knuckles behind his balls. Dean’s knees came up involuntarily. Cas shifted to hold them down with his own body weight, and he set to, working his lips further onto the shaft and beginning a slow, tortuous rocking motion. Cas planted his knees and pressed outward, spreading Dean’s legs.

“Yeah, babe,” Dean whined breathlessly. Cas glanced up, blue eyes framed by dark lashes, and Dean’s belly twitched. “Jesus.”

Cas traced the center line of Dean’s perineum with his middle finger, down to the soft flesh of his hole. He circled it with his finger as his mouth suckled and slobbered, trading soft licks for hard suction, and bringing Dean’s knot up into a hard bulge at the base of his cock. Dean couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“Please…”

Cas pulled off, locking eyes. He put his middle finger in his mouth and coated it with wetness, his eyes unblinking, then he leaned back in and took Dean all the way down his throat as his digit pressed into silky, dark heat. Dean pulled his knees up again, planted his feet, and rocked into the touches.

Cas fucked him slowly with one thick finger, very close to Michael’s full girth. It was a powerfully evocative feeling, as if his mate and his husband had fused into one, and Dean threw his Mating-bond wide, taking his mate by surprise. Dean groaned and ground his hips down and then up again into Castiel’s hot mouth.

His fists tightened into the bedding. Cas swallowed around his head, and Dean cried out and reached for his shoulders. That finger was relentless, steady as a robot, driving in, out, in, out, like Dean’s cock in Castiel’s mouth, and Dean felt Michael turn, riveted, to feeling what Dean felt.

“Baby…”

Castiel’s grip on Dean’s knot was tightening rhythmically. Dean felt his feet break out in a hot sweat, and his eyes clenched tightly shut as his body quickened. He panted and rocked. He was heat and pressure, motion and pleasure, and his mate’s eyes watched every move. Cas picked up the pace with his mouth, slamming home to the point that Dean’s head buried into the back of his throat on every down thrust even as his finger relentlessly pegged Dean’s prostate.

“Cas…!”

Cas hummed, and that was the final straw. Dean locked up, his hips lifted off the bed, his ass clenched hard onto his husband’s finger, and he filled Castiel’s mouth with his come. Cas swallowed it as it came, expertly protecting himself from choking or gagging, massaging Dean through the pulses of pleasure, holding him until his hips collapsed back in exhaustion. Cas slipped his finger carefully out, licked Dean’s cock clean as he pulled off. He stretched out on his side beside the puddle of a man he’d just brought to ecstasy, and he kissed Dean’s jaw.

Dean had an arm thrown over his eyes. He smiled at the kiss and turned his head.

“I see a kink in your plan now, Alpha.”

“No, Dean. No kink. Go to sleep. The pups aren’t going to let us have more than a couple of hours before we’re up again. We should grab sleep while we can.”

“You sure?” he mumbled back, losing his argument even as he made it, the post-orgasm sleepies sucking him fast under.

“Very sure. Good night, my love.”

“Night, babe. That was awesome. Thanks.” Cas chuckled as he kissed him. He helped Dean climb under the covers and rolled in beside him, arranging himself to be easy for his octopus husband to cling to, and he fell almost instantly to sleep.

Dean lay awake a little longer. He closed his eyes with Cas’ chest hair tickling his nose and he watched from a distance as Michael returned the favor, feeding Dean the eroticism of a secondhand orgasm. Michael’s pissy mood seemed to have evaporated with Dean’s shared carnal sensations, and he was clearly inspired to proposition the warm and willing body beside him into waking up for one more round.

Dean smiled to himself, scrubbed his nose with a palm, snuggled back in, and fell into a soft snoring without a single coherent thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just briefly, this is for open sharing of life-shit, not for sympathies, but I'm flat on my ass with Shingles at the moment, and I gotta say, if you're old enough that they'll let you, get the damn Shingles vaccine. This sucks.
> 
> Also, my usual output runs on a roughly 28 day cycle to match my work schedule, but if I disappear on you for a round or two, it'll be because I'm trying to make sense of my notes before I fuck the story up irreparably.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's reading. I love you.


	3. Friday, November 2, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pack Alphas are busy all up in these parts. Charlie's got a problem without a simple solution, but she turns it on its head with a classically Charlie solution. Sam and Sarah get caught cutting corners, and it's not a fun resolution for either of them. And as always, the heartbeat beneath it all, binding it all, stringing through it all...is Dean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, not gonna lie. It totally got away from me, and time was, I would cut in half and make two chapters out of it, but I really liked the way it flowed, one segment into the next, so you're stuck with a grisly 18K words to slog through. Not a bit sorry.
> 
> Warning for what could be a very uncomfortable aspect of this section of the fic...but honestly, if you've read the previous, you won't be surprised. The point is that pups are raised in this universe right up inside everything that goes on, so there are pups about, witnessing the sticky, stingy happenings. There is no sex involving pups directly. It's just that, as doors are often open, and people do stuff out in the main rooms, and pups are all over the house more and more, they will bear witness to stuff. It's how the AU is framed. It's not new, but this is the first chapter of the current generation that it becomes relevant.

“Goodbye, baby,” Meg crooned sweetly, hanging half out of the trailer door in the dappled early morning light. “Have a good shift. Don’t forget to grab milk on your way home.”

Ketch kissed her softly, their heights aligning nicely with his feet on the concrete pad and hers on the second step. “Behave yourself,” he whispered, adding a trace of menace as he quirked a half-smile to soften the threat. “I’ll see you tonight. Call me if you need anything.”

Contractors were arriving in their heavy trucks as Ketch negotiated his car down the dusty dirt track and out onto the paved road. Meg stayed perched in the trailer door, waving him out until his car vanished around the scrub brush at the edge of the Pack’s property. The moment he was gone, her hand changed motion, flipping from a farewell wave to a frantic beckoning, targeted at the small copse of trees that shaded the trailer.

Charlie darted out from behind the biggest tree trunk and slipped in past Meg, taking the climb in one swift step. Once inside, Meg latched the door and the two women shrieked in laughter too long suppressed.

“I thought he’d never leave!” Charlie exclaimed. “There are ants by that tree, by the way. I need calamine.”

Meg chuckled. “The man is nothing if not predictable,” she clarified. “He can feel when I’m up to something, and it always takes a quickie to distract him. Works every time.”

“Eww. Meg! You left me squatting in ants so you could get your happy face on? Where’s your loyalty?”

Meg was unflappable. She busied herself in the tiny kitchen and then joined Charlie at the table with two mugs of coffee and a plate of mostly-burnt toast, stating emphatically, “If you don’t know by now where sex rates on my loyalty meter, Charles, then let me introduce myself. Hi. I’m Meg. I’m a sex demon.”

Charlie batted away the hand Meg put out for a handshake and attacked her mug instead.

“Fine. Bitch.”

“You called me,” Meg reminded her, and Charlie immediately broke into a grin, hunkering down conspiratorially and leaning across the table to grab Meg’s hand.

“Right. Can you keep a secret?”

“Never,” Meg responded truthfully.

“Well, try. This is important.” The grin slipped away, and Charlie’s eyes became haunted.

“What are you up to? Why the creeping around in the ants before I’ve even got my knickers on?”

“Meg, I think I’m in love,” Charlie confessed, her brow knitting darkly as if admitting she killed and stewed small children.

Meg snorted rudely and snatched her hand back. “You’re talking to the wrong chick, Chuckles. You need Joanna Beth.”

“No, no, Meg,” Charlie entreated. “I need you. No one else has a prayer at talking me down the way I’m really, really hoping you can. You gotta help me. Help me untangle myself. No one keeps it all separate the way you do. The last thing I need is to fall head over heels. It was only supposed to be sex. I dunno what went wrong. You gotta help me figure this out. What if she finds out and dumps me? Oh, God, what if she _doesn’t?_ What if she starts talking about Mating?”

Meg sat upright and sipped her coffee, thinking. “What’s her name?” she asked after a very pregnant pause.

“What difference does it make?” Charlie retorted.

“Do I know her?”

“You’ve…met,” Charlie admitted carefully.

“Is it Gilda?” Meg guessed.

“What?! No! I would never date a client! What the hell, Margaret?!”

Meg cocked her head and upped an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine, maybe I sneaked around with Gilda a few times, but no. Just…no. Besides, she’s way outta my league. She’s, like, a fairy princess or something ethereal and floaty and shit. What the hell did the toast do to you to deserve torture of this magnitude?” Charlie poked at one brittle brick before abandoning it.

“It’s Dorothy,” Meg stated with assurance. “Isn’t it? Brusque, businesslike, badass, take-no-prisoners, stick-up-her-ass, here-one-day-gone-the-next Dorothy. You two have had a thing for years.”

Charlie’s ears turned bright red, followed by the rest of her face, her neck, even the backs of her hands pinked up where they clasped her mug. She floundered for a response, and Meg blew out a heavy breath.

“Jesus, Charlie! Really? Please tell me you’re not planning to Mate that bitch. She’ll bring the whole Pack down with her dour expressions. And can you even imagine her and Ketch in the same Pack?”

“You gotta help me, Meg! The last thing I ever wanted was to be daydreaming about Mating-scars. I don’t _want_ to feel this way. Make it go away!”

“Shh. Hey. You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t wanna do, kiddo. You’re not Omega. Unless you Trigger a TM response, you can plant your feet and say no.” Meg slid out of the short bench seat and switched sides so she could wrap an arm around her friend.

“I don’t know what to do,” Charlie confided sadly, snuggling in and accepting the hug.

They both jumped when a hard knock shook the lightweight door and rattled the trailer.

“Fuck me,” Meg muttered. She eased back off the bench and cracked the door to find the construction foreman standing on her patio. “What?!”

“Good morning, ma’am. Is Ketch or Benny around? We have a…problem.”

“Do I look like a Neanderthal-built, testosterone-flooded brute to you? No! They’re not here. Go away. You have a phone, doncha? How about you try using your brain instead of sitting on it?! Scram!”

Meg saw his eyes flick past her hip and land on Charlie behind her. She pulled the door closer to her side, but he’d already spotted her visitor.

“My apologies, beta,” he said stiffly. “Please forgive the interruption.”

Meg slammed the door on him and turned to rest her back against it. “He saw you,” she pointed out. “Why are we hiding again?”

Charlie closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “I’m playing hooky from work this morning. I couldn’t face it. Dorothy has a seminar in the main auditorium today, and I’m the coordinator and running the A/V board. She’s been working on it for months. I called in sick.”

Meg processed that slowly, thinking through the options still available. “Well, that’s both our butts roasted.”

“We could say you brought me here to take care of me,” Charlie suggested helpfully. “You’re off today. I’m sick.” She coughed halfheartedly. No one would buy it in a million years. Not for a second.

Meg sighed. “That would’ve worked before I Mated. Not anymore. He can tell when I lie. Sometimes I get by on omissions, but he always knows a direct fib.”

“You have to help me, Meg,” Charlie begged, pulling up onto her knees on the bench. “Dorothy doesn’t want a girlfriend. The second she gets one whiff of what’s going on in my head, that’ll be the end of it. I don’t wanna Mate, but I can’t lose her! How do I turn it off?” Charlie’s panic, her desperation was beginning to sour the air in the confined trailer.

Meg stayed by the door and sighed. “You don’t,” she said softly after a long pause. “You have to ride it out or cut it off. There’s no middle-grounding this. You’re going to have to talk to her.”

“No, I can’t!”

“Then you break it off,” Meg said gently. “Walk away without an explanation.”

Charlie whimpered sadly, hopelessly.

“What’s so awful about Mating, Charlie? Huh? I mean, it’s got its perks. Maybe you’re afraid of the unknown. Maybe this could turn into the best thing to ever happen to you!” Meg strode aggressively forward and snatched the plate of inedible toast. She flung it into the trash, turning her back on her friend, irritated inexplicably.

Charlie ruffled, turning her panic on to the only target in the room. “I’m not afraid, Meg! Not of Dorothy, not of anyone! That’s not what this is! How could you say something like that to me? To me?!”

Meg wasn’t one to take a confrontation and deflect. She squared into it. “You’re not afraid? Fine! Then go up there and talk to her! Tell her how you feel. All of it. Not just that you’re falling for her, but just how desperate you are to never Mate anyone. Tell her that! If you’re not afraid, what’ve you got to lose? She’ll either blow it off, or laugh in your face, or…”

Charlie slapped Meg across the face. Hard. Tears ran unimpeded down her cheeks. Meg stared at her in shock with a hand touching her reddened cheek.

“I don’t know why I came here in the first place,” Charlie spat. “You’re too selfish to think of anyone but yourself. Forget I said anything.”

Before Meg could respond, Charlie was out the door and flipping off the foreman who stood a dozen yards away with his phone to his ear. All around, as the newly risen sun bathed the construction site in a warm glow, workers looked up from their morning tasks to watch her stalk across the property, her red hair ablaze as it flared out behind her.

Meg watched from the top step as she made her way to the side street, watching as her little yellow Gremlin emerged and turned right, the opposite direction from The Facility. Meg sighed heavily, aware of the construction foreman picking his way across to her. She didn’t acknowledge him.

“Yes, Sir,” he said into his phone. “She’s right here.” Silently he held the phone out to her. Meg roasted him with a scathing look and then disappeared into the trailer and slammed the door.

Her cell buzzed less than a minute later. Meg switched it off.

From there, laying across the full bed at the end of the trailer in her bathrobe, Meg played a countdown game with herself, betting herself whether it would be Ketch’s heavy footfalls outside on the concrete pad first, or Benny’s. 

Either way, she was toast.

Her stomach rumbled.

She crossed her arms across her belly and stared upward at the curved ceiling.

She lost her own bet.

It was Dean.

He knocked gently but didn’t wait for her to respond before hauling himself up the steps and flopping down beside her.

“What’s going on, brat?” he asked softly with his usual playful air. “Word upstairs is you’re not answering your phone. Ya know, that’s a flaying offense for folks like you and me. Tops get kinda twitchy when their brats disappear off the grid without warning.”

Meg rolled into him and clutched his shoulder, hiding her face in his chest.

“Well, now,” he said, wrapping her up in a tight embrace. “That’s a nice surprise. I don’t usually get a hug from you.” He propped his chin up over her head and began a slow caress of her back with the pads of his fingers. “Meg? Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

Her voice was muffled when she spoke. “Tell them I’m fine, Dean. All right? Tell them I burned my breakfast and it freaked me out, but I’m fine now.”

“You don’t smell fine.” Gingerly, he sat up, bringing her carefully along with him. He ducked his head to get a view of her face, lifting it with a soft touch beneath her chin. His eyes caught the outline of a hard slap on her cheek, and he traced it gently with his thumb. His eyes softened. “The plot thickens,” he whispered. “I heard tell of a fiery redhead tearing outta here at a run. You got a sidepiece going on, Megster? Lover’s spat?”

She rolled her eyes and pulled away. “If I was sneaking around,” she clipped churlishly, “it wouldn’t be with a redhead. It would be with an oblivious moose.”

Dean laughed at that. “What happened?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said, sounding much more like herself. She scooted to the edge of the bed and cleared the two coffee cups off the table. “It’s not mine to tell.”

“You can turn your phone back on though,” he pointed out. “Ketch is not a rational dude when he’s worried about you. I had to pull rank to keep him from tearing out here and ripping you a new one.”

She paled and turned away, surreptitiously powering her phone back on. “Great. Thanks, alpha. Now he’ll add humiliation to whatever else he’s gonna be mad about. You should’ve just let him come himself.”

“He’s got critical work to do right now, Meg,” Dean told her seriously. “He’s needed onsite. There are people in far worse condition than you are, and they need him to stay and do his job.”

“You think I’m selfish too,” she accused coldly.

“What?” he asked, taken aback. “No. Meg, I think someone threw you off-balance this morning, took you by surprise maybe, and then bolted on you before you could get your feet set. I have a suspicion who that was, but I have no idea why. What I do know is that you don’t have to try to handle it alone. Keeping someone’s secret after she slapped you in the face isn’t friendship, kid.”

She scoffed and held her tongue.

He took a couple of steps closer. “I also think that your construction crew out here is run by a gaggle of gossiping geese who pay more mind to the comings and goings of this trailer than they do their jobs of building your home. You might wanna keep that in mind when you try to sneak visitors in without your mate or your Alpha knowing.”

“We weren’t sneaking,” Meg protested. “She’s Pack, Dean. She’s allowed to drop in whenever she wants.”

“Unless she’s due at work to run the A/V lines for a seminar,” Dean replied calmly.

“I’m a nurse,” Meg replied. “She’s not feeling well. She dropped by for advice.”

“Then why did she hide her car around the bend? Surely, Ketch would approve of you dispensing medical care to a sick Packmate. In fact, I imagine he’d insist on it if he knew. Don’t lie to me.”

They were sparring, and Meg knew she’d lost. “I can’t tell you, Dean. You just have to take it up with her.”

“Her who, Meg? How many redheaded Lafitte Packmates called in sick this morning? Who slapped you?”

She gave him a withering glare that caused him to laugh outright. He raised his palms in surrender, chuckling. “All right. You win. Don’t tell me. But here’s the deal. You’re looking at a stiff punishment for failure to answer your phone and being unreachable. Something about slamming the door on the foreman when your mate tried to speak to you through his phone? For whatever that’s worth. For interrupting professional workflow. For sneaking a visitor in and out in a clandestine manner that indicates foul play. Want me to go on? You two are up to something, and you’re not in the clear until it all spills. You might consider spilling sooner rather than later. C’mon. It smells like burnt toast in here. Let’s go get breakfast and talk.”

She dropped her robe without bothering to seek privacy and rooted in the flimsy dresser for a pair of jeans with her backside bared and unashamed. Speaking over her shoulder, she called across to the alpha. “Take me some place that serves bacon. And, hey. How’d you convince my bigger half to stand down anyway? You can’t pull rank when it’s a Pack matter.”

Dean looked up from the ceramic turtle he’d been examining, one that looked like a school art project – probably a gift to Meg and Ketch from young Ben. The kid idolized Ketch. “I can when your Pack Alpha backs me up,” he commented dryly. 

She turned around, buttoning her jeans, still bare from the waist up. “Benny knows?”

Dean smirked and held her eye, raising his brows. “Benny’s off chasing Charlie down as we speak. He knows everything…except that you’ve got a handprint on your cheek.”

“Damnit,” she muttered, kicking at the array of clothing littering the bedroom floor and reaching down for a bra that didn’t seem too dirty to wear. “None of this is my fault, you know. I was behaving myself, minding my own business, enjoying the sweet, sweet ride of a Dom who’s got my number six ways from Sunday. Charlie pulled me in and sucker punched me, and the sun hadn’t even cleared the trees yet. You’re buying me a tall stack AND bacon,” she asserted, slipping her arms into a wrinkled button down and kicking the door open before she even started buttoning it. “And I don’t wanna hear a lecture on how much coffee I guzzle.”

“Lead on,” he agreed, pulling the door closed behind him and returning the foreman’s wave.

“Who’d they get to run the A/V board for the seminar?” Meg asked as she slid into the passenger side of the Impala.

Dean rolled his eyes. “You probably don’t wanna know. It’s embarrassing.”

Meg continued to stare at him as he backed out, his arm and his eyes over the back seat. As he righted himself, he caught her eye and chuckled. “Becky and Garth are trying to figure it out. It’s not pretty. We really need a bigger tech crew.”

“Wow,” Meg remarked, feeling a little better about her own situation.

“Shuddup,” he said, put the car in drive and ambled his way across the bumpy dirt drive.

“Why’d Benny send you?” Meg asked as the enormous car made its way closer to civilization, hot grease, and caffeine.

Dean shot her a look. “Sometimes, even more than Pack, what’s called for is alpha. You and I may not be Pack directly, Margaret, but we’re family. I was happy to help. He couldn’t send Jo; she’s in class. He would’ve tapped Lisa, but she’s Contracting this morning. With Benny hunting down Charlie and Jo and Lisa tied up…”

“Ketch was next in line,” Meg finished for him. “And he was probably slavering insane. I’m fucked, Dean. Say your goodbyes now. I’m dead.”

Dean laughed. “You’ve been in way worse scrapes than this, Meg. You freaked and turned your phone off. It’s not the end of the world. You apologize and take your punishment and go back home for lunch.” He maneuvered the car into a narrow parking lot where Benny’s Escalade sat near the door of a neighborhood diner. He parked in the back corner, away from the other vehicles. Meg eyed the diner warily. If Benny was here, Charlie probably was too.

“Don’t be a coward, Kemosabe,” Dean prodded with a back-of-the-hand slap at her thigh. “You and me have faced way worse than this and did it with our heads held high. Don’t go soft on me now.”

Meg clutched at his arm. “I can’t go in there, Dean. Charlie hates me. She came to me for help, and I sent her away in tears.”

Dean leaned across the bench and put his hand over hers. “Charlie could never hate you, kiddo. Maybe you helped more than she was ready for. If she lashed out, that’s not hate, it’s fear. I need you to buck up, stand up straight, look her straight in the eye, and be real for her. She doesn’t need you to cave on her now. She needs you to be strong. That’s what Pack does.”

“You don’t know what’s got her spooked though, Dean,” Meg tried futilely.

Dean winked and got out. Meg followed, trudging across the parking lot and hiding her cheek in her palm, willing the red handprint to fade before Benny saw it.

Inside, Charlie’s head came up first, and Meg looked away, scooting in beside her Pack Alpha with her eyes down and her slapped cheek averted. Charlie bit her lip. Her eyes welled up with tears as she turned to stare out the window. Dean took the booth spot next to Charlie, dropping an easy kiss on her cheek.

“Glad to see you feeling better,” he remarked glibly. “We missed you this morning. Must’ve been something awful to keep you at home when your main squeeze was up onstage strutting around like a mute peacock.”

Charlie huffed. “She’s not my… Oh, for Pete’s sake, Dean.”

“So you’re feeling better?” he asked seriously.

“I…um…yes. I’m fine.” Charlie shot a look across at Benny and then at Meg before blushing and dropping her gaze to the Formica table.

Benny let his gaze go flat, but he said nothing, stirring creamer into his coffee.

Meg and Charlie both broke the silence at the same time:

“Charlie, I’m sorry…”

“Look, Benny, I can explain…”

Benny tapped his spoon on the side of his cup and then set it down on a napkin before lifting his cup to his lips. He acknowledged Dean with a slight nod after setting his mug back down. Dean leaned back and sought a waiter with his eyes, hoping to avoid entangling himself more than he already was. Charlie didn’t try to continue her explanation. Benny wasn’t ready to hear it. She blushed deeper red and folded her hands in her lap.

Dean signaled the waitress for coffee and a menu, and Benny turned to Meg who was steadfastly keeping her face in profile. He regarded her for a moment.

“Have you contacted your mate to let him know you’re alive? He’s very concerned that something upset you this morning after he left.”

Meg pulled her phone from her pocket and sent a quick and terse text to her mate. Benny nodded.

“Thank you. You know he worries about leaving you with a slew of construction workers around. We know some of them, Meg, but not all of them, and the trailer is no protection from attack. Not really.”

“Then why did you move us out there?” Meg challenged. “Why not Jack and Jo instead?”

“I said Ketch worries. I didn’t say I was worried. Jo needs to maintain a steady household for her mother’s benefit. And Lisa is too inexperienced dealing with contractors and construction issues. You and Ketch were the ideal selection, and I won’t hear another word about it. But while you’re there alone, until our Pack compound is complete enough for the Pack to move in, you’re to follow your mate’s safety protocols. That includes answering your damn phone when he calls you. We clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Meg mumbled.

He was staring hard at the side of her face, and something about her body language gave her away. Slowly, Benny reached across and turned her to face him with a hand cradling her jaw. She sighed and closed her eyes. The handprint stood out stark and pink on her cheek, each finger outlined distinctly. Benny’s jaw twitched. He met Charlie’s eye, and she swallowed. He could be the gentlest bear of an Alpha when he was relaxed, no threat to anyone. When he laughed, it was nearly impossible to remember that he was a powerful Dominant and an Alpha who commanded fear in his enemies.

He wasn’t laughing now.

“Can you explain this?” he asked Charlie starkly.

She didn’t answer right away.

“Are you going to tell me it’s not what it looks like?”

Meg jerked her face out of his grasp. “It’s not a big deal,” she grumbled.

“That’s not for you to decide, beta,” Benny growled.

“Yes, it is,” Meg shot back. “It’s MY fucking cheek. You weren’t there. You didn’t see what happened. I torqued her up, and she was already tense.”

“Silence,” Benny said, not loudly, his eyes never leaving Charlie’s.

Charlie swallowed again.

“Answer the question,” Benny directed.

“I slapped her,” Charlie admitted. “Unprovoked. Meg didn’t do anything to deserve it. I just. I got scared, okay? I got scared and I lashed out and I bolted, and… Do we have to talk about it here?” She shot a nervous look around. There weren’t many diners, and everyone she could see was Lupin, but…still.

“I told you you should’ve taken it to Jo,” Meg told Charlie. “She wouldn’t have ramped you up and freaked you out. I’m no friend. Look at us. You came to me for help.” Dean reached across the table and placed his palm on the back of her trembling hand.

“No, it’s not your fault, Meg.” Charlie was crying openly now, huddled into herself with her arms wrapped around herself miserably, leaning away from Dean and his warmth. “I should never have put you in that position. It wasn’t fair.”

“Good,” said Benny. “That’s out of the way. Let’s get this over with so we can get some breakfast and go to work. Dean, order something filling for all of us. We’ll be right back.”

“You got it, Alpha,” Dean said, uncharacteristically serious as he slid out and waited for a lead-footed Charlie to ease past him. Charlie and Meg reluctantly followed Benny back out to the parking lot. If Charlie was put off by the public aspect of the interior of the restaurant, Dean had no doubt she was nearly peeing herself at being positioned bent at the waist and leaning into her hands against Benny’s rear bumper, side by side with Meg, her ass bared to passing traffic from two directions at the intersection of cross streets.

Dean ordered a couple of stacks of pancakes, extra bacon and sausage, the seasonal fruit, and a double serving of oatmeal along with four plates. Through the window, he couldn’t hear what Benny had to say, but he could recognize a lecture when he witnessed one, and he could hear both of the betas cry out when Benny’s strap landed hard on their backsides.

Around him, most of the diners were watching through the plate-glass windows, chewing beatifically, casually interested. Outside, more than a few motorists honked their horns as they drove past. Some shouted out their windows. Benny ignored them. Dean picked up a slice of bacon when the waitress slid a platter into the center of the table, and he ate it slowly, watching Benny help them both dress, turning each beta, cradling them each in his immense embrace and wiping tears away with his thumbs. Dean watched them cling to Benny and then to each other, sobbing into each other’s hair.

By the time they returned to the table, Dean was on his third slice of bacon and everyone seemed far better put together. Benny gestured for Charlie to take the inside spot before sliding in next to her, and Dean scooted over to let Meg take his seat. Meg sat down and then kept on sliding until she was nearly in Dean’s lap. He wrapped both arms around her.

“Hey, now,” he chuckled. “You’re all right. Look, I got you pancakes.”

“I swear,” Charlie stated, loading her plate up from the platters in the middle. “If Garth fucked up my wiring, I’m gonna castrate the fucker.”

“You’ve got no one to blame for that but yourself,” Benny reminded her gently. “Nobody would’ve touched your equipment if you’d been there.”

“Alpha, I can’t,” Charlie said plaintively. “I can’t go back there, not while _she’s_ there. Please don’t make me go back today.”

His eyes twinkled slightly, but his voice was careful. “You’re just going to run the board from your apartment, then? How’s that going to work?”

“You don’t get it…”

“Celeste,” he cut her off, dropping her given name as a means of getting her immediate attention.

“Nobody calls me that,” she protested weakly. “Charlene, maybe…sometimes…but…”

He held her eye until she found the wisdom to zip it and look chagrinned. He nodded once he was certain she would shut up and listen. “What I understand is that you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don’t expect you to do this alone, Charlie, but you need to talk to that woman that you’re afraid to admit you love. No one’s going to try to force you two to Mate. You hear me? In fact, I forbid it. You belong to me, Charlie Bradbury Lafitte, and you don’t Mate without my permission. You’re not getting my permission to Mate Dorothy Baum, at least not any time soon. I suggest you two negotiate some other type of … relationship … connection … whatever. Whatever you decide to call it, it’ll still need to go through me for approval. I’m not going to leave you dangling in the wind trying to cobble something together that doesn’t give you what you need, and I’m not going to let you walk away from someone who’s important to you just because you’re afraid. Talk to her. Find out how she feels. Bring it to me. We’ll deal, Charlie. There’s more to love and attraction than biting someone’s neck and tying your life to theirs forever.”

Charlie had frozen in shock, staring in disbelief at Benny, her fork clutched like a dagger in her fist.

“Say something,” he prodded.

And the dam broke. Charlie dropped the fork and flung her arms around him, taking great handfuls of his shirt as she buried her face in his chest. “How did you know?” she muttered.

He chuckled, embracing her tightly. “Pretty hard to miss, to be honest. Dorothy had me flummoxed, but you, kiddo, you give the game away every time. You’re gonna wanna keep your day job, Charlie. The world of subterfuge is not for you.”

“Nuh-huh!” she protested adamantly. “Tell that to the international multi-corp I just redirected funds from!”

“What?” asked Benny.

“Um. I mean. How ‘bout this cantaloupe? Dean, you think we could get seconds? It’s really hitting the spot. Mm-mm!”

“Charlie?”

“Kidding, boss! Just kidding. I’m totally not redirecting funds from douchewad global nefarious corporations to aid California wildfire reclamation. I mean, who would do something like that? Crazy people, amirite? Coffee! I’m out of coffee!”

Dean snickered and hid it with a big bite of syrupy pancakes that bulged his cheeks. Meg shook her head and reached for more bacon.

***************

“It was a shitshow without you. So, thanks for that,” Dorothy said, her tone bitter. “I spent two months on that seminar and no one past the third row heard a damn word I said. I hope you’re happy.”

Charlie kicked at an invisible lint ball on the rug between them.

“I see you’re feeling better,” Dorothy said into the lengthening silence. Neither of them were under any illusions that the other believed Charlie had been anything but skipping out.

Dorothy broke away, picked up her jacket, and took three steps for the door before stopping motionless and staring straight ahead. 

“Just answer one question,” she said harshly. She pivoted on her heel. “Was ruining my presentation and making me look stupid the end goal, or is there more coming? I think I have a right to know.”

“I’m in love with you,” Charlie blurted.

Dorothy blinked. Her eyes narrowed, and she blinked again. “What, now?”

Charlie sucked in a breath to steel her nerves. “I-abandoned-you-today-and-fucked-up-your-seminar-because-I-just-realized-I-love-you-and-I-couldn’t-stand-for-you-to-know! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for this to happen! I know it’s not what you’re looking for! I’ll understand if you can’t see me anymore!”

“Hold up! Back up a minute! You sabotaged the biggest presentation of my life because you love me? Fucking hell, Charlie!”

“I panicked!”

“You panicked.”

“YES! I knew you would look at me just like you’re looking at me right now, and you would roll your eyes in disgust and remind me that this isn’t what you signed up for and girls like us, we don’t _Mate,_ and you’d walk out that door and never speak to me again, and I… I … I don’t want that, all right?”

“You don’t want…what, exactly?” Dorothy seemed frozen in place, in shock.

“I don’t want you to walk away from me! Can we, maybe, brainstorm something here? Can we talk about it? I’m not looking for a mate. I’m not!”

“Charlie, I don’t know what to say. You know I can’t Mate you. You know why. I told you everything. Why are you saying this? Why can’t things just stay the same? That was working for us, wasn’t it?”

“Because I fell …”

“Right. You’re in love. Jesus Christ. What do you want me to do?”

“Please.”

“I’m not going to Mate, lady. Not you, not anyone. No one owns me, but me! You don’t own me, Bradbury! I can’t believe this!”

“No! Dorothy, not mates. Listen to me. Think. You don’t have to say it back. It doesn’t work like that. But I’m not looking to Mate either.” Charlie swooped in close and took hold of Dorothy’s wrists, her face inches from the other woman’s. “I’m in love with you, and when I first realized that, it felt, I felt, ecstatically happy! And then I was terrified. I realized I can’t bear to lose you, not for this, not right when it became so clear how much you mean to me. Please, don’t you see? It changes everything, and it doesn’t have to change anything!”

“How long?” Dorothy asked coldly. “How long until you start to feel the itch for the bite? I’m not going to live like that, Red.”

“Not ever,” Charlie told her staunchly. “I’m no one’s mate either. I don’t ever want to marry. But what I do want…I want you. No gold bands. No scars. No metaphysical bonds. No mortgage. No ties except what I say to you and you say to me. Dorothy Baum, I love you. I want you in my life from right now until time stops turning, and I’ll take you however you’re willing to show up. And I’ll never, ever leave you with poor mic coverage ever again.”

Dorothy looked struck speechless. She adjusted her hands slowly until her fingers were laced with Charlie’s. She stared at their hands, and her mouth opened and closed several times before she found words. “No bonds…ever?”

“No bonds ever,” Charlie confirmed. “No expectations. No rules. No Pack. No documents. No pups. When you’re away, I’ll text you and make you laugh. When you’re home, I’ll sleep over and sex you up until you’re dizzy. If you get pissed at me, you can yell, and then we’ll make up and start over. And I won’t ever ask for more than what you give me.” Charlie worked her right hand free and held her pinkie out. “Pinkie swears are as binding a vow as you’ll ever owe me.”

Dorothy balked. She shook her head, staring at the pinkie. “You’ll want more. Eventually. Charlie, I can’t.”

“That’s not for you to worry about, beta,” Charlie answered. “You don’t own me. I’m a free woman … mostly … except that I have a Pack Alpha and all that goes with that. But, he’s not going to push for more either! I swear! Benny’s cool. It’s just you and me and taking each day as it comes. C’mon, Baum. It’s an adventure. Be adventurous with me.”

“You skipped my seminar because you realized you love me?” Dorothy said, still staring at Charlie’s pinkie.

“Yes! Keep up! Come on, babe! It’ll be fun. Let’s show ‘em all they’re wrong about biological mandates. Let’s give free will a spin! Huh? What’dya say?”

“Charlie, I’m gone for months at a time…”

“And I’ll miss the hell out of you, and I’ll find someone boring to fuck in the meantime, and then I’ll make it all up to you when you get back!” Charlie felt electric, invincible. She could feel the beta’s defenses falling.

“Even if I never join your Pack?” Dorothy questioned, her face a grimace, certain she’d found the weakness in the plan.

“Psshhh! You’re not invited to join, you bitch. You’re way too gloomy. You and Ketch in the same Pack? No way! You’d scare off all the new recruits!”

“I’m not gloomy! And how are you calling me a bitch when you practically just proposed!” Dorothy set her feet and put her fists on her hips in offense.

“You _are_ kinda gloomy. Maudlin, even. But I love you anyway, and I didn’t propose. I did the opposite. I … anti-proposed! Dorothy Baum, will you NOT Mate me or marry me or…anything…me for the rest of our lives, and will you stick around all that time to make sure that NOT Mating and marrying sticks?”

It was too much. Dorothy burst out in laughter that ended in a tight embrace and a hand splayed at the back of Charlie’s head to hold onto her and make certain she was real. Her laughter shifted to sobs, and she sank slowly to her knees, taking Charlie with her. She sniffled into Charlie’s hair.

“How do I even answer that?” she asked, pulling back.

“Little less snot would be appreciated,” Charlie quipped to cut the tension.

Dorothy laughed through her sobs. She found Charlie’s hand, and with extreme care, she isolated Charlie’s pinkie. Wrapping her own pinkie around Charlie’s, she sobered her expression and chanted, “Charlie Bradbury, I swear not to marry or Mate you. And if you ever stand me up for an important presentation again, I will flay you personally until you have to learn to wire a microphone with no fingers.”

As she looked up into Charlie’s eyes, saw the agonizing effort to hide how much affection Charlie felt, and found herself desperate never to see that pain again, she leaned in slowly and kissed it off Charlie’s face. Their pinkies still locked, Dorothy had only one hand free to caress Charlie’s face. She leaned her forehead against Charlie’s, breaking their lips apart, and whispered, “I love you, too, you bitch. Took you long enough.”

“Wha…?!” Charlie sputtered, but Dorothy cut her off with another fiery kiss.

***************

Charlie was shit at keeping a secret, and as word spread, wolves began to spontaneously congregate at Zeke’s bar to wish the happy non-couple well. Dorothy found herself the unwitting subject of a full third degree from Castiel concerning her intentions, a turn of events that she found supremely unfair and one that she stood her ground through, shooting daggers over his shoulder at Charlie, sitting in a booth with Michael, nonchalantly sipping beer from a bottle.

“What do you think he’s asking her?” Charlie posed. “He looks deadly serious. You don’t think he might scare her off, do you?”

Michael shrugged. “If he does, then she wasn’t worth her salt anyway.” Glancing across, Michael chuckled. “I don’t believe you need to worry though. Looks like to me, looks like he’s got her defensive, and that’ll bring out the stubborn in someone like Dorothy. You should write Alpha a thank-you note after tonight. Wild horses won’t be able to tear her away from you after this.” Michael took a long drink, seeking out April with his eyes. Pete was at the bar with Dean, the two of them laughing hysterically at something or other. Michael smiled.

“You think so?” Charlie could only watch and worry.

“Mm,” Michael replied.

“Well, I’ve got until Benny gets here to ready my own defense,” Charlie told him glumly. “God, you should’ve seen him this morning. He was pissed. I’m pretty sure my right ass-cheek is gone altogether.”

“Serves you right, you know,” he lectured, halfway between ‘Everyone’s Mama’ and ‘Wet Cat’.

“I know,” she agreed. Charlie glanced around but Meg and Ketch were noticeably missing. She sent up a small prayer for her friend’s welfare before her eyes settled back on Michael sitting across the table from her.

“What’s eating you?” she asked. “You’re about as celebratory as a bar rag. Can’t you be happy for your best friend on her big day?”

His eyes snapped from April to Charlie. “What? Of course I’m happy for you. See? I’m smiling. Besides, since when are you and I best friends?”

“Oh, please,” she protested. 

“I thought the whole point of tonight’s festivities was that you’d just proclaimed Dorothy your newest best friend.” Michael popped a pretzel into his mouth and found April again with his eyes. Charlie’s followed his.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Charlie challenged, reaching across to grab his chin and bring his eyes back to her. “Dorothy and I are the opposite of best friends. We’re best nothings. We committed to not being labelable. That leaves a vacancy in my lineup, so you’re up, buddy boy. Get crackin’. Do best friend stuff, stat!”

Michael chuckled. “I appreciate the nomination. I’m honored. I will endeavor to live up to whatever I’m supposed to be doing for you.”

“You’re a prick,” she decided. “Why do I like you?”

“No idea,” he murmured. “I’m not throwing any non-bridal showers.”

“Hey!!” Charlie’s fingers snapped in his face, and Michael startled to realize he’d drifted away again.

Charlie was affronted. “Two seconds, Michael! Can you not be happy for someone else for two fucking seconds!! She’s not going anywhere in the next few minutes. She lives in your fucking house! You can look away long enough to share a beer with a friend! Jesus!”

“Sorry,” he sighed, straightening in his seat, his ears going red when he felt Castiel’s eyes pulled to their booth at Charlie’s volume. “You’re right. And I am happy for you. I really am. Congratulations, Charlie. You pulled off something important, and I wish you two all the best.”

“That’s better. Thank you.” Mollified, Charlie nudged his ankle with her foot. “She’s pretty damned sexy, isn’t she? Look at her. She’s got her dander up. Look at that posture. You know what that is? That’s the love of my life fighting for the right to never Claim me. God, she’s incredible!”

“Maybe I’ll ask her for pointers,” Michael mumbled.

Charlie shot him a perplexed glance and then cottoned on fast and looked across at April just as the Ozzie was bestowing a dazzling smile over at Michael, apropos of who knew what. But Dean was grinning too, and that meant cahoots. Michael’s lip twitched upward and he took a long drink, released a slow breath, and then blushed when he found Charlie’s eyes on him again.

“You haven’t Claimed her yet?” Charlie asked.

Michael licked his lips. “Unimportant,” he stated. “This is your night. Let’s see who’s up for pool.”

Michael was out of the booth before he finished speaking, but Charlie caught his arm and stopped him. “It’s okay to wait until the time is ripe, Michael. If you try to force it, you might hurt her.”

His breath was shaky when he let it out. “The time is never going to be ripe. I’m kidding myself that waiting will make any difference. Come on. I’ll spot you four in the pocket, and you can pick solids or stripes.”

“Asshole! I don’t need your charity. I’ll wipe the floor with your ass. Oi! Winchester! Grab a stick! We’re hitting felt! It’s you and me against Jo and Michael!”

“Charity?” Michael exclaimed. “Of course you don’t need charity if you’ve got Dean on your team. Who picked these teams? I want a redress!”

“Shut up and break,” Jo told him, whacking him on the ass as she passed by to select a cue.

“Go get ‘em, baby!” Jack called, raising his tumbler in the air without leaving his barstool.

“Be right back, sugar!” she called back without lifting her eyes off the triangle she was racking.

“I need a puke bucket,” Dean commented dryly, but he winked at Michael as he found a spot by the wall with his cue.

“Suck it, Winchester,” Jo added, lifting the triangle and hanging it on a nail on the wall. “I may take a fuck-break halfway through and make you watch. It’d serve you right.”

“Bring it, blondie,” he quipped back. “I’ve been dying for an eyeful of that hot piece of ass you Mated.”

The sound of the break startled Dean into looking around, and he hung his head in mock apology when he caught Michael’s possessive expression. Michael’s green eyes were golden haloed, and they sizzled with menace, burning into Dean’s even as the balls ricocheted about and three stripes fell. Dean sauntered up and lifted Michael from his doubled-over position with a palm on his chest. He left a searing kiss as he walked Michael backward to the wall and pressed him up against it.

“You, baby. Not him. Just you,” Dean murmured.

“Liar,” Michael said softly, pulling Dean in for a deeper kiss and letting their wolves have a taste. They heard the sound of Jo taking the follow-up shot but waited until Charlie cleared her throat before pulling apart.

Dean smirked, finding a spot at the table and adjusting his cue before tearing his eyes away from his mate’s. His shot was fast and clean and powerful, and he flowed from one position to the next with no evident need to calculate his chances. Solids dropped. The table cleared. Dean flicked his eyes briefly to Jo’s, tapped the corner hole with his cue stick, and then shot smoothly, sinking the eight ball.

“Table’s yours, Harvelle. You were saying?”

“Shut up and reset the damn game,” she muttered acerbically. “Jack, babe, bring me a beer!”

“Coming!”

It was a good night, all in all. Charlie abandoned her doubles partner when Benny showed up, and Jack took her place, proving a far more adept player than she’d been, to Dean’s delight. The two of them cleaned up until their mates demanded a shuffling of teams. Jo and Dean versus Jack and Michael was far more even a match. It wound down to a final shot of a final game – a shot that Dean blew disastrously when Cas slipped up beside him and whispered unexpected filth in his ear. Smug, Cas sauntered away without looking back, blind to the shocked and betrayed expression on his husband’s face.

Michael bought a victory round and claimed a victory kiss from April, who was only too happy to oblige. It was their first evening out in months, away from the pups and free to revel. All four of them threw themselves into it with intentional abandon in the knowledge that barring a catastrophe, they had most of tomorrow to themselves as well. It had taken some scrambling, but once things began to fall into place, everything fell just right. All four of them were ready for a night of adult entertainment, each worn out from their own particular burdens.

Charlie and Dorothy couldn’t have chosen a better time not to tie the knot.

Sam and Jess joined them as the hour lengthened. The two looked every bit as ready for a night of freedom as Dean and his co-parents were. He set them up with drinks to get them started and urged Dorothy closer so she was in prime position to field their questions, catching Sam and Jess up in every way.

It took a couple of tries for Jess to catch Dean’s attention, what with the boisterous volume in the bar. 

“What was that?” he hollered with his hand cupped at his ear.

“Where’s Sarah?” Jess repeated.

Dean nodded that he’d heard that time. He raised his voice above the din. “She volunteered to take the graveyard shift with the pups! She’s probably asleep right now, trying to get a nap before her turn!”

“Alone?!”

“No! No! She’s teaming up with Eunice! Gabe, Fred, and Kali have them until one! Sarah and Eunice take over until six! Monique’s partnering with Cain at dawn until Fred comes back! It’s a patchwork, but they swear they’ve got us covered all the way until one or two in the afternoon! Have another beer!”

“Don’t mind if I do!” Jess shouted back. Dean laughed at her apparent discomfort at the volume, and he took her elbow and steered her further in, deeper to where it wasn’t necessary to shout.

Jess sighed in relief. “Thanks, Dean. I’m too old for that kind of noise.” He nodded in understanding, tugging at his own earlobe in an effort to pop his ear before sliding into the last empty booth. “I bet you’re as ready for a night like this as I am,” she continued. “It’s been insane at work lately.”

“Sam said you won the case you’ve been working so hard on though,” Dean mentioned carefully. “Can you take a break yet? Maybe a week off? You never did get much of a honeymoon, you know.”

“I know,” she agreed. “Believe me, I’m not about to forget. Sam reminds me at least twice a month. But it’s not linear with these cases. We don’t have the luxury of working on just one at a time. As soon as one case ends, the next one is primed and prepped and ready to go to court. There’s no good way to take a break.”

Dean frowned. “Jess, you can’t live like that forever. It’s a meat grinder.”

“I took twelve weeks when the twins came home,” she reminded him. 

“Sweetie, that was a year ago!” Dean protested. “And it wasn’t a vacation, either. It was hard work. I remember. I was there. When do you get a real break?”

“I told you, Dean. I can take a day or two here or there, but there’s just no way I can be gone for a whole week, much less two. Not right now.”

“I know one way, but I don’t know if you’ll wanna hear it.” Dean swigged from his beer bottle and kept her eyes. She narrowed them and then shook her head.

“No. No way.”

“Wouldja just hear me out?” He leaned across the table. “Look, you’ve got the credentials. You’ve got a killer resume. You did your time in the trenches. You’ve seen firsthand what we’re up against. Jess, we need attorneys like you. Don’t you get it? If we don’t hire you, it’ll be someone else from your office – someone who doesn’t have the snap you have, but who had the guts to apply for the job! We don’t want them, Jessica. We want you! Just take a look at the job posting. You fit it. You’re perfect for it.”

“I fit it,” she accused, “because you wrote it from my resume.”

“We did no such thing!” Dean defended. “Go back and look at previous job postings if you don’t believe me. Go back however many years you want to. You fit it because the job requires someone with courtroom defender experience, someone who’s worked with Lupins of all designations and who’s got a win-to-loss ratio that proves they can back up the shingle on their wall. Jess, you know the laws governing and limiting our people like the back of your hand. Aren’t you itching to stop trying to work for the good of our species _in spite_ of the laws and work _with_ them? No one knows where the injustices are like a public defender does! Damnit, beta, we _need_ you. Just look at the job posting.”

“All right! Fine! I’ll look.”

“And even if you don’t apply,” he said huffily. “You’re taking a goddamn vacation soon. Don’t make me set Cas on your ass to get you to put in for it.”

“I worry about leaving them, Dean,” she admitted sadly.

“The twins?” he asked.

“The Ozzies on my docket,” she clarified. “The most horrible things happen to them in the system when a defender drops their case. A simple vacation for me could mean an uprooting of an Ozzie from everything they’ve ever known and getting shipped cross-country to live with an alpha who beats them. How can a week on a beach justify that?”

“You’re no help to anyone if you burn yourself out, Jess. And that’s the track you’re on. Your boys need you healthy. Your clients need you healthy. And beta, you’re not going to save everyone. That hurts, but it’s the truth. Come join a team where you can make a difference by the tens of thousands, not just the ones.”

“Easy to say unless you’ve looked into that one’s eyes and seen her desperation,” Jess said fatalistically.

“I’ve seen her desperation, Jess,” Dean reminded her.

She reached across and took his hand, feeling the trembling in his fingers as his adamance affected his nervous system. “I know, Dean. But then you understand how hard it is to turn my back on individuals whose cases I know I can impact. Maybe I’d be helping more people by working for Cas and maybe not, but if I leave the people who’ve grown to depend on me, … How can I face a choice like that? How can I leave them when they’re so vulnerable?”

“You’re not the only defender in the P.D.’s office, beta. And when you leave, they’ll hire someone bright and ready just like they did you. You aren’t leaving them with no one. But you can’t do everything alone anyway. You can only do so much. You’re only one person. Join us though, and we can magnify your reach.”

Jess became still and thoughtful before breaking out in an enormous grin.

“What?” asked Dean, always ready for an inside joke.

Jess cackled slightly. “Cas hates his lawyers,” she said conspiratorially. “I’d be a thorn in his side on the job, and he’d tie himself in knots to avoid bringing it home with him.”

Dean chuckled. “He hates the contract and business lawyers,” he clarified. “He’s actually a lot warmer to the legislative and the project attorneys.”

“You’re a shitty liar, Winchester.”

“I’ve been told,” he said with a swig of his beer that emptied the bottle.

“Dean.” She sighed as she stopped him from leaving with a hand on his arm. “Sam didn’t put you up to asking me, did he? Please be honest.”

Dean sat back down on the edge of her bench and wrapped both of his hands under her arms to pull her close. “Sam would kick my ass if he knew I was propositioning you about this. That’s the God’s honest truth, Jess. But some things are worth an ass-kicking.” He rose again, pressed a hand into her shoulder, and left her sitting there, thinking.

“This stool taken?” Michael asked suavely as he slid onto it, appearing out of nowhere, nearly overbalancing off the other side.

April’s face lit up, and she leaned in to kiss him. “You smell like sweat and a barrel of hops,” she told him, wrinkling her face in distaste.

“I might be… a little bit drunk-ish,” he admitted.

“A little bit?” she questioned. “You’re swaying.”

“I’m good,” he disagreed. Holding onto the bar helped.

“How about a walk?” April suggested. “You could use some air. Walk me home, big boy?” She batted her eyes coquettishly, and Michael’s laugh was a sophomoric bubble bursting wetly through his lips. April smiled in amusement. “I’ll go tell Cas. Don’t move. Don’t fall over. I’m not good at picking men up off the ground.”

“Pshh! Fall over. Huh! I’m good.”

“Mm-hm.” She left him carefully, one hand trailing across his sternum as if unsure what would happen if she removed it too quickly. Michael blinked owlishly, following her reflection in the mirror behind the bar as well as he could. She didn’t go far, and she returned in a matter of moments.

“So, bad news,” she told him. “No walking home for unaccompanied drunk Omegas. Alpha’s orders. He’s calling us a cab. We can, however, wait outside on the sidewalk as long as we stay close. Can you make it to the sidewalk?”

“Unaccompa…? Unaccomped? I’m not unaccomp…anied. I have you!” Michael slurred, following her off the stools. “And you smell nice. C’mere.” He draped himself over her as she staggered toward the door.

“My hero,” she deadpanned in an amused voice.

“No, no, you’re MY hero,” he disagreed. “You’re gonna fight off all the randy alphas that try to waylay us on our way home. Get ‘em! Look! There’s one now! Attack!” Michael lowered his head and head-butted Benny in the gut, only to find himself somehow looking at the stars from flat on his back on the pavement. Benny leaned over him, frowning as he assessed Michael’s condition.

“I’m taking him home, Alpha,” April told Benny.

“Well, it’s either home or to the hospital to get his stomach pumped,” Benny agreed. “See if you can get some water and an aspirin down him before he passes out. And I think you’d better share our Uber. I’m not comfortable with the two of you travelling alone.”

“Thank you, sir,” April told him. Benny helped Michael find the vertical again, but it didn’t last. Michael bolted for the bushes beside the front door and heaved his guts up, groaning miserably about how everything had suddenly begun to spin about.

“Ah, good,” Benny joked. “No need for a stomach pump after all. He chose the cheap route.” Benny ambled over and supported Michael’s head as he retched again. Looking up, he spotted Castiel, concerned, in the doorway. “We’ve got him, brother,” Benny soothed. “Andrea and I were just heading home. We’ll drop your Omegas off on the way. Michael’s gonna feel better in a bit. You go on back in and take your time.”

Cas nodded. He looked April over quickly, gave her a hug and a kiss, thanked her for helping Michael get home, and traced along their Mating-bond enough to be sure she wasn’t impaired to the degree that Michael was. April giggled at the touch, and Cas dropped another kiss to the corner of her mouth, charmed as usual by his mate’s youth and vibrance. “Go straight home,” he instructed. “Obey Benny. I want you in bed asleep by the time I get home, but if Michael is still vomiting in half an hour, call me. Drink some water. Don’t check on the pups. They’re in good hands. I’ll see you in the morning.” He couldn’t resist kissing her again. She was receptive and sweet and warm, and Cas felt a pang at watching her walk away when the Uber pulled up. He bit his upper lip and stopped his feet from following her to a place he knew there were beds.

Dean appeared at his shoulder. “We can go if you want, Alpha. It’s okay with me if you need your mate tonight. Don’t let it go longer than you need. Don’t hurt yourself trying to stay pure on my account.”

Cas had been listening with half an ear, but at the last, he laughed outright. He cuffed Dean upside the head playfully. “Brat,” he said. He wrapped an arm over Dean’s shoulder and steered him back into the bar. The throng was thinner, but there was still a hometown crowd busying up the joint, and Cas felt good. One last look over his shoulder as the Uber pulled away and his mate waved from the backseat, and Cas let the warmth of the bar distract him from the power of his mate’s pull. He rarely felt it tug at him this hard. A night out with his husband wouldn’t hurt his Mating-bond. He would make it up to her tomorrow. He found an empty bar stool, and he pulled Dean between his knees, leaving the man breathless with laughter as his lips found all the ticklish places behind Dean’s ear.

There was something carnal and grounded and utterly _real_ about the feel of Dean’s muscles under his hands when they were a bit sloshed that wasn’t there when they were sober. It was a delight Cas couldn’t get enough of, and his hands splayed out over Dean’s ribs, feeling every twitch, every shift of his body beneath his clothes. Cas wrapped his hands around Dean’s torso and lifted, setting him upon the bar itself. Cas turned into him, shoving Dean’s knees wider and huffing a drunken breath into his belly until Dean curled over him in near hysterics at how it tickled. Cas grinned up at him.

“You’re incredible,” he said earnestly. “And you’re beautiful.”

“And you cheat,” Dean accused, bringing his knees in tight to force Castiel’s mouth away from his belly.

Cas chuckled meatily. “I do. And you love me anyway.”

“I love you anyway,” Dean agreed, bending over to claim his husband’s lips. “I love you so much, you cheating bastard. Come and let me kick your ass at darts. Either that, or stop playing around and go ahead and fuck me over this bar. The teasing is driving me crazy.”

“Mm, tempting,” Cas admitted glancing left and right for a quick read on the room.

“C’mon, babe. There are no apes here. We scared ‘em all away hours ago.”

“Mm, so tempting,” murmured Cas. “But we’ve got more at stake than we used to have, and when I fuck you, I want to pound you like I mean it. You’ll have to wait for it, I’m afraid.”

“Jesus, man. You can’t say shit like that.”

“Come on, Dean. Darts. Remind me how the scoring goes?”

“Asshole. You know how to score darts.”

“That’s true,” Cas teased as he lifted Dean down and set him on his feet. “And I’m not bad at hitting the target I’m aiming for.”

“Yes, well, I can vouch for that.” Dean let Cas claim his mouth, his lips, his tongue. Dean felt a little dizzy when Cas grabbed him by the hand and marched him assertively across the bar to the dart board.

He still beat the Alpha in three games out of five.

***************

April unclipped Portia’s leash just inside the garage door and then removed her halter, hanging both by the door before kicking her shoes off, adjusting their positioning against the wall, and following the fluffy black dog into the kitchen.

Sam was up and making breakfast. He looked as chipper as ever. “Hey, kiddo,” he greeted. “Thought I was the first one up. How do you feel after last night’s festivities?”

April insinuated herself under his arm and snuggled in close, breathing in the happy scent of Pack and feeling welcome and loved. “I didn’t drink all that much,” she told him. She stole a slice of bacon from the plate and ate it slowly, holding the plate out for Sam to remove the newest slices from the pan. “Michael’s the only one who really overdid it. I expect he’s going to be miserable this morning.” Portia nudged April’s leg and then tried Sam’s. The beta hissed at the dog and pointed to her bed in the corner. She dropped her head and slunk her way across the room, collapsing unhappily into her cushion. April snorted. 

“Poor thing. She acts like no one ever gives her anything. I fed her before we went out, and then I let her run with Cas for a few blocks before we stopped to walk the rest of the way. She’s already had more of a day than the rest of us, and she still wants more.”

“Well, I mean,” said Sam reasonably. “There’s bacon.”

April giggled.

“So Cas is up already too?”

“He’s out running. We left together, but I only run as far as I have to to satisfy the dog. I’m no runner.”

“Me either,” Sam agreed. “If you see me running, it’s probably the zombie apocalypse, and you should turn and run with me. Coffee?”

“Yes, please!”

Sam poured her a cup. “Don’t say yes,” he warned, “if you’re not supposed to. Please don’t get us both in trouble.”

She smiled. “I’m allowed coffee before breakfast,” she assured him. “It’s only once the meal starts that I’m restricted.” She pulled herself up to sit on the counter by the sink, and she sipped her coffee, closing her eyes to take in the aroma.

“If Cas is out running, Michael overindulged, Gabe and Kali stayed up late babysitting, and Jess has her first opportunity in months to sleep in, it might be just you and me for breakfast.” Sam swapped pans out and began to whisk eggs. “What happens,” he wondered, “if you’re alone at breakfast, and your mate is otherwise occupied?”

“That’s not an issue,” Cas told him, walking in and helping April off the counter. “Her mate isn’t otherwise occupied.” He kissed her and then stole her bacon, smirking.

“No disrespect, Alpha,” Sam said, unruffled. “But, say you got tied up unexpectedly at breakfast. You’ve got some Dominants around most of the time. Would you rather she skip the rituals or have one of us step in? How critical is it that we follow the script? Can she miss?”

Cas had an arm around her waist, and she fit herself into his side as if she had been born there. “She can miss a day, Sam. If it’s one breakfast, it would be better to allow her to take a chair rather than disrupt her training by switching leads without preparation. If it goes longer than one day, and I’m unavailable for direction, consult Jo and Dean. They know what she needs.”

Sam nodded. “If it helps, sir, I would be happy to step in. Perhaps it would make sense to make some emergency plans. You could talk me through the critical points. I know it would be on an emergency basis only, but I’m a worst-case-scenario kind of guy, and it would make me feel better if there’s a plan in place.”

Cas stared at him for a moment, speechless. “Um, thank you, Sam. I will take that under advisement. I suppose it’s possible that I could be hospitalized or called away unexpectedly at some point when Cain is unavailable. I expect that to be unlikely, but it wouldn’t hurt to allow you to sit in on my sessions with him. It wouldn’t hurt for you to learn how to manage April’s morning routine. Speaking of which…” Cas let her go and smacked her backside to send her back up to her room to prep for breakfast. She smirked as she grabbed her coffee mug on the way and took the last of her bacon back, stuffing it all into her mouth.

Cas grinned as she left.

“What brought that on?” he asked Sam. He began rifling through the cabinet for plates.

“My Impact class with the apes, actually,” Sam admitted. “Sometimes it goes a little off-script, and turns into a Q&A about Doms and Subs in Lupin daily life. It feels good to straighten out some misconceptions. We got to discussing the ramifications of conditioning an Omega, an Ozzie in particular, to a certain routine and then having it pulled out from under them due to an upset in the household. It made me think about it. It was a good question, and I didn’t have a ready answer.”

“It was. Good thinking, Sam. I’m glad you keep on your toes, and I’m glad you feel empowered to speak up when you have a concern.”

“Well, that comes from good leadership, sir. You make it safe to speak my mind.”

“Hmm. I try. And I always have Gabriel prepared to remind me when I fail.”

Sam laughed. “Well, to tell you the truth, my paddle arm needed a break that class, so a Q&A was very welcome. Since Sarah offered to let the students get a taste for how it’s supposed to feel when they do it right, I’m getting the workout of my life. Everyone wants a turn. I mean, you’d think they would take our word for it, but…” Sam chuckled. “It’s turning into a rite of passage.”

“Sam.”

“What?”

Sam turned and found the Alpha staring intently at him with his mouth agape.

“Your Primate students are paddled in class?”

“Well, yeah. They practice on each other some, you know?”

“On each other?”

“Of course. I mean, we have dummies too, but they don’t graduate until they can deliver on a live person. That only happens when they have a real model to practice on.”

“Right. I understand. We agreed that as long as they sign the waiver that exculpates the ACRI from accountability if they are charged with battery for practicing, that they be allowed to practice on each other. But you said they’re standing in line for…For what, exactly? Sam, you’re not striking Primates yourself, are you? Sarah isn’t striking anyone. Tell me I’ve misunderstood.”

“I mean…” Sam blinked.

Castiel didn’t blink.

Sam swallowed and turned the fire off under the eggs. 

“Samuel, have you, at any time during the course of your classes teaching Primates the proper techniques for corporal punishment, ever, even once, struck a Primate student with a paddle, whether in punishment or in demonstration? Answer me honestly.”

“Yes, Sir. I have.”

Cas let the weight of the admission reverberate in the kitchen.

“Sir, we thought…”

“We?”

“Yes, Alpha. Sarah and I. We both agreed that it was an insurmountable hindrance to be confined to pointing and directing when demonstrating cuts straight through everything. Nothing explains better than feeling it for yourself.”

Cas closed his eyes. He rubbed his forehead with a hand. “Sam, the scope of the class. We were as clear as we could possibly be. The legal team wrangled it for weeks. You _can’t_ touch them. You told me you understood! How could you change the scope without consulting me? Do you realize what you’ve done?!”

Sam’s mouth fell slack. “No, Sir. I didn’t think…”

“No, you didn’t think! Go wake Sarah. Bring her to my office. Classes are cancelled for further notice.”

“Yes, Sir.” Sam beat a hasty retreat up the back stairs toward Sarah’s little apartment over the garage. Portia fell in with Castiel as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He found Dean showering, and he stripped off and climbed in with him, sluicing the sweat of a fast run off his body. The dog curled up on the bathmat. He filled Dean in, and the two of them dressed casually for the weekend before confronting Sam and Sarah in Castiel’s office.

Castiel could hear them in his office, stressed voices in a loud whisper as he stalked across the foyer with his husband and Portia in tow. He didn’t feel any sympathy. Sam had flagrantly put Castiel’s reputation at risk, and he’d jeopardized the progress of the movement. They could be looking at a lawsuit at the very least, at most, a federal stoppage and charges of assault. They could lose their licenses, all of them. He rounded the doorway, noting the immediate silence that followed, and he placed himself behind his desk, leaning into his arms with his fingertips splayed on the gleaming surface. His eyes shifted to crimson.

“Explain this to me.”

Sam rose from the sofa. “Sir. Alpha. The course has evolved so many times since its inception. We’re always adjusting, tweaking, tossing out what’s not working, sliding in new ideas… We’ve changed so many things about how we present the information. We lost sight of the mandate to keep a wall in place between Lupins and Primates in terms of direct contact.”

“You forgot,” Cas stated coldly in summation.

“We forgot,” Sam agreed. He shot a nervous look to his right where Dean lingered in the doorway, one hand idly fingering his chin and his eyes on the patterned rug at his feet.

Castiel turned his eyes on Sarah, mutely commanding a statement from her as well. She hiccupped and then stammered a bit before finding her voice. “Sir, it…it … was … wasn’t something we really even considered. Not in the way we should have. It seemed a natural progression. Everyone was frustrated at the disconnect. We were so close to conveying the exact _feel_ that we were trying to elicit, both from the delivery side and the receiving side…but…well, hitting a silicone dummy doesn’t illustrate what we need to illustrate the way letting someone feel the power in the swing does.”

“I see.”

Cas didn’t soften his expression. He let the silence lengthen, watching the two of them fidget. Sarah glanced at Sam, and Sam frowned at the floor.

At length, Sam’s frown deepened, and he drew in a breath to speak, looking bravely back up at the Alpha.

“Sir, I get it. When we began to flounder, we should have brought it to you or Dean. We should have put it all out on the table and worked out a solution that doesn’t cross legal limits. But we were both so determined to make this class a success, and coming to you for help would’ve felt like an admission that we couldn’t do it on our own. We wanted to do it on our own.”

“You were prideful,” Cas commented softly. “Tell me something, Samuel. Where is your gold medal for solo completion of a complex mission? Who bestows that honor upon you? The Universe? Do you have a box of these medals somewhere? Under who’s auspices are you directed to work out your conundrums alone?”

Sam chose not to answer. Sarah chewed her lower lip.

“What happens now?” she whispered nervously. Castiel’s eyes shifted to her face, and he studied her. How far into Lupin norms had she travelled? Was she capable of understanding the next steps.

“What happens now,” Castiel said, turning his back and thinking as he spoke. “Is a cessation of the class, likely including a refund of tuition funds and a forfeiture of overhead costs. You and Sam will provide full statements to the Internal Investigations Committee, as will some of your clients, I’m sure. Legal will need to be involved. We need to know if you’ve done any lasting damage to the brand or to the mission. That will take time to unravel.”

Behind him, Cas heard the sound of Sarah dropping hard onto the seat of the sofa. He turned. She had her head in her hands. Sam’s hand rested comfortingly on her shoulder.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Castiel added. “At least it came out before any of the clients filed a complaint. Sarah, you have a modicum of an excuse in that you’re still a student yourself, and you’re not yet fully certified in correctional techniques. Your presence in the classroom was one of support, and as such, I have no intention of holding you more to account than is fair.”

Sam shifted, knowing there was a ‘But’ coming. Cas didn’t torture him with a long wait.

“But you, Samuel. You are the lead classroom instructor, the course designer, its chief cheerleader, and the primary responsible party. This was your baby, and I’m holding you entirely responsible.”

Sam’s face flushed. He resisted fidgeting with a monumental effort. Keeping his eyes up took everything he had.

“Yes, Sir. You have my sincerest apology, Alpha. I let you down. I let The Facility down. And I’m very sorry.”

“I’m exceedingly disappointed in you both, and you will both be punished. Sam, your punishment will be administered here, but it will be logged in your employee file. If there’s a bright spot for you, you can at least rest easy that you won’t face double-jeopardy when the Committee reaches the conclusion that a stiff punishment is warranted. One correction will do.”

“Yessir,” Sam muttered stoically, losing the battle to keep his eyes up.

“Sarah.”

“Sir.”

“As a student employee of the ACRI, and a Primate, you do not fall under the awning of punishable employees. For the same reasons it is inadvisable to demonstrate corporal punishment directly on your Primate students in a spanking class, The Facility cannot apply corporal punishment to you as an employee. Spanking Primates is against the law, and the ACRI follows the law in all matters. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir. But then…?”

Cas continued, glancing at Dean briefly. Dean was listening intently, cataloguing and following, but he had nothing to add. “I plan to leave your institutional punishment for the Committee to name, if they should feel a reprimand is warranted. You can expect to have such a reprimand added to your employee file, and you may face other penalties as well. I won’t try to guess what they will deem appropriate as I really have very little experience with alternate means of correcting a wayward employee.”

“I understand, Sir. Whatever they name for me, I will do my best to hold myself accountable and to overcome. I’m still determined to prove that I can succeed in a Lupin environment.”

“Indeed. I expect no less,” Castiel told her. “But that is in answer to the question of your institutional punishment. You still owe a debt to me personally as your Alpha.”

Her head popped up, and her pupils contracted. “Sir?”

“You cannot imagine I plan to let this go without a Pack response. You broke faith with me, Sarah. You embarrassed me before professional colleagues to whom I defended and championed you. I am in a position now to appear before them with my hat in my hand and admit that I miscalculated your judgment.”

“You’re going to sp…spank me?”

“I am.”

Her face lost all color, and had she not been seated already, her legs would have folded. Sam’s arm crossed behind her to hold her across her shoulders and pull her to lean into his hip. “You just said it’s illegal…” she murmured.

Cas raised a brow. That brow. “Institutional corporal punishment of Primates is off the table, Sarah,” he said simply. “I won’t put my business at risk over this. But you know my mind where Pack matters are concerned, and you knew this moment would come eventually. We have an agreement, do we not?”

“It’s okay,” Sam said softly. “It’ll hurt, but he won’t kill you. Better to get it over with. The anticipation is the worst part.”

Sarah clutched at Sam’s hand, and she looked up at his face, terrified.

“Shh,” he soothed, sitting down next to her. Cas let him speak. “It won’t be as bad as you’re imagining. Just remember everything we’ve been teaching in class. You’ve got this, Sarah, from a theoretical perspective. Now it’s time to take what you know to the practical side. You’re gonna be fine. And look, I’m so sorry. This is my fault. We had hours of meetings that you weren’t a part of, hashing out the boundary lines, all the legal limits. I knew all that, and I let my enthusiasm cloud my judgment and talk me into pretending I didn’t know we were crossing lines. I’m sorry. I let you down when I should’ve known better. I DID know better.”

Sarah took a deep breath and laid her forehead on his collarbone. “I did too, Sam. It wasn’t just you. Alpha’s right. I fucked up too. It was my suggestion in the first place.” She turned her head and looked across the desk at Castiel. “I understand, Sir. You’ve been patient with me, answered all my questions, brought me into your Pack. I won’t try to bail on you now. We’ve talked about it so many times, and I always knew somewhere in the back of my head that this day would come. I trust you, Alpha. I’m ready.”

Cas nodded sharply. “I appreciate that,” he told her. “But I’m not. It’s time for breakfast, and my mate is patiently waiting for me in the kitchen. It would be inappropriate to make her suffer when she’s done nothing wrong. Sarah, I will deal with you at ten o’clock sharp in the library. Do not be late. Samuel, ten-fifteen. If either of you have any plans for the day that take you outside this estate, cancel them. You’re both grounded for the weekend.”

“Sir,” Sam said, sitting forward. “Would you permit me to be there for Sarah, as a friend, during her punishment? If…she wants me there, that is? For support?” Sam turned questioning eyes on the dark-eyed woman sitting beside him.

Sarah looked uncertain, clearly weighing the embarrassment of having her backside bared and flayed in front of witnesses with the comfort of having a friend there for support.

Cas watched the play of emotions across her face, and he called it for her. “Not this time, Sam. Let’s allow her a modicum of privacy for this first experience. I will allow the two of you to spend the afters together if you like. You’ll have plenty of time to lend her your comfort and support when I’ve finished with you both.”

He found Dean’s eyes again and raised his eyebrows in question, but Dean simply shook his head subtly in reply with a thoughtful expression.

“That is sufficient for the moment, then,” Cas stated imperiously. “I will notify the Committee after breakfast, and we’ll go from there. No one is excused from joining the Pack in the kitchen for our morning meal. Dean, please go wake Michael. Let me know if he’s too ill to join us.”

Cas rounded the desk and nodded to the two on his couch. “Dismissed,” he said gently.

The twins were the saving grace at breakfast. Hank and J.T. were both rowdy and cheerful, both famished and intent on teaching Michael a song they’d learned the night before. Michael, to his credit, fought his pounding hangover to entertain his favorite nephews, following their directions, and singing each line carefully as they taught it to him. They were learning words and language skills so fast now, it was dizzying.

Castiel let them be. He far preferred a household that embraced the vibrancy of youthful vigor and volume, encouraging the pups to play as they would as long as they ate well and addressed the adults respectfully. Eating well was unlikely ever to be an issue for the twins, although singing with their mouths full merited an occasional correction from their father. Sam shepherded toddlers back into their seats and back toward their plates repeatedly, clearly compartmentalizing his own doom into a different part of his head.

Sarah watched him, wondering how he could still come off as a Dominant when he was under a ticking clock himself. She tried different mindsets to emulate him, even as he spoke a sharp word to his oldest son that froze the child mid-step and sent him straight back to his chair to concentrate on eating for the next minute-and-a-half. She couldn’t swing it. Sarah couldn’t shake the feeling of _being_ a castigated toddler herself, one for whom the bell relentlessly tolls, and it dropped her into sullen silence between Gabe and Dean.

“Ow-Fa! Sing! Sing like Mye-Cal!” Hank ordered, pointing at Castiel with his fork. Jess, redirected his cutlery back to his plate and instructed that pointing at people with one’s fork is rude. 

Cas laughed. “I’m afraid your Uncle Michael’s singing voice is far better than mine, Hank. Perhaps you can teach the song to me later and help me practice.”

Hank grinned and agreed. It was a date, and he beamed up at Sam who was trying to clean the eggs off his face. Cas turned back to Jess, discussing the potential legal ramifications of Sam’s decision to skirt the law in his classroom. Jess looked at it as a puzzle to be worked apart and fitted back together, and she didn’t miss that Dean was listening to every word from his end of the table with a telling smirk on his face. 

Nor did she miss when Castiel’s eyes glazed over while she was unwinding the precedents already on file. Cas’ cheeks took on a high blush, and his nostrils flared. Jess cut herself off and allowed him his moment. His hands clutched at the table’s edge, and he groaned obscenely before rocking slightly, squeezing his eyes closed, and flooding the kitchen in the scent of Alpha release.

“Ow-Fa!” J.T. pointed. 

“Finish your breakfast, kiddo,” Sam told him. “Let’s let Alpha have a minute.”

Hank climbed out of his chair for the thousandth time and ducked down to look under the table at April kneeling beneath it, her mouth still suckling her Dom softly. Before Jess could stop him, he’d crawled under and climbed into her lap, seeking the source of the soft, loving scent that suffused the kitchen. It smelled like Pack to Hank.

April shifted slightly to make space for him on her lap, and he curled up against her soft chest and closed his eyes. April ran her fingers through his silky blond hair.

Jess rolled her eyes and sank down onto her knees, calling softly to her son. “Hank, sweetie, not right now. Remember what we said? Breakfast time is mate’s time. You’ll have plenty of snuggle time with Aunt April later. Come and sit up at the table with me.”

Hank hesitated, but a glance upward into the Alpha’s face from between his thighs changed his mind. Cas was a lenient patriarch where pups were concerned, but he didn’t hesitate to remind them that minding their parents wasn’t optional. Hank earned a kiss to his cheek from his mother and a very welcome hug as he settled onto her lap, making space for J.T. when his twin realized snuggles were being granted.

“Speaking of mate’s time,” Kali shifted the conversation. “What brings you up into a chair this morning, Dean? You’re off your pillow. Little too much celebration last night?”

He laughed easily. “Not for me, no. My Sir isn’t quite up to his usual role this morning. So, with Michael’s queasy belly and this mess with the spanking class, I decided I was needed here more than on my pillow.”

“You decided?” Kali asked.

“Yes,” he answered emphatically. “I decided. I’m still alpha, Kali. Nothing happens to me without my say-so, and Michael and I both have to be on board any time we do a breakfast submission. It’s for both of us, not just for him.”

“Hm,” she replied with a surprised expression. “I thought there was more mandate to it than that. Some mornings you don’t seem very pleased to follow directions.”

Dean blushed. “Yeah, well, some mornings I need a firm hand.”

She nodded, slapping Gabe’s hand when he tried to slide her last piece of bacon off her plate. “I see. And how do you decide which mornings you kneel for Michael and which you kneel for Alpha? I’ve always wondered. The four of you make it look seamless.”

“Um, I’m not really sure,” Dean admitted, seeking input from Cas at the other end of the table. Cas tilted his head in thought and then shrugged.

“We do whatever feels right for the day, I suppose,” Cas replied. “Certainly if Dean presents us with a fully alpha aspect in the morning and states that he needs to spend breakfast in his own chair, neither of us would argue his choice. However, if he’s unsettled and submissive or bratty, he will be taken in hand. With Dean, Michael and I have found it’s best to cut right to the chase when his state of mind begins to swirl, cut it off before it gets any momentum behind it. Right, Michael?”

“Definitely,” Michael groused into his plate.

Fred strolled cheerfully in with Alex in his arms, nearly toppling as Alex spotted his Daddy and launched himself.

“Hey, Ace!” Dean greeted, catching the pup. “Good morning. Daddy saved you some breakfast. You hungry? Thanks, Fred. How’d they do last night?”

Sarah snorted.

“Oh, right,” Dean amended. “You had the late night shift. Was it awful?”

She huffed a laugh. “Emma and Alex both slept like champs. Kat and Jimmy played tag-team with the crying fits. I swear they’re in cahoots.”

“Ouch,” Dean commiserated. “Thanks for taking one for the team. I owe you one.”

“The triplets are waking up,” Fred told them. “They seem none the worse for wear this morning, but they will be ready for sustenance very soon.”

Cas looked under the table and ran a caressing hand down April’s face. “Are you finished with breakfast?”

She nodded with a smile and nuzzled the inside of his thigh contentedly. 

“All right, then. Up you go. Let’s go see who’s awake and who’s cranky.” He pushed his chair back. “Excuse us, please. Thank you all for a delightful breakfast. Jess, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish our discussion this afternoon. Hank, you have a song to teach me. Perhaps we should do that outside in the backyard during playtime.”

Hank grinned up at his mother, delighted at being included in the Alpha’s agenda.

“Sarah and Sam, please be punctual. Dean, when you’ve fed Alex, come find me, please. Michael, for heaven’s sake, go back to bed. You look terrible.”

There was a light chorus of, “Yes, Alpha.” The twins’ version was a bit clumsy, and Cas graced them both with warm smiles.

Cas swept April up into powerful arms, and she squealed and then laughed happily as they disappeared around the archway.

Sarah found she couldn’t swallow around the lump in her throat, and she couldn’t feel her fingers. Sam was right. The anticipation was the worst part.

“Please come in,” said Cas when she stepped hesitantly into the library at ten. She turned to close the door, but he stopped her. “There’s no need for that. We’ve got the first floor to ourselves. We have all the privacy we need. Come here, please.”

She felt seven years old, and her feet wouldn’t stop shuffling, but she made it to him. He sat perched at an angle on the long reading table in the middle of the enormous room and he let her approach without getting up. When she stood before him, he angled his head to get a view of her face.

“Don’t be frightened, Sarah. I will see you safely through. You know how this process goes. First, tell me why we’re here.”

She blinked through an adrenalin rush. She’d practiced up in her room. She’d been imagining how it would feel, but with his piercing blue eyes on her, everything fled her brain, and she couldn’t think. He waited calmly.

“I’m…getting a spanking,” she said haltingly, “because I mishandled my role as a classroom teacher, and I broke the law I embarrassed you. I’m sorry, Sir. It won’t happen again.”

He nodded serenely. “No, I don’t expect it will. Did you, in fact, actually paddle anyone in class yourself, or did you merely sign off on Samuel doing it?”

She looked up at him. Yep, still scary. 

“Um. I don’t swing the paddle in class at all, Sir. But, uh, Sam’s been teaching me in private separately, and he’s paddled me a few times. Just as a demonstration, you understand. It’s nothing personal…or sexual…or kinky. We would never!” Her face was on fire as she blathered stupidly.

Glancing back up, she found him mildly amused.

“And in these private tutoring sessions,” he asked. “Have you ever paddled him?”

“Yessir,” she admitted. “For practice. To see what it feels like to deliver a painful blow. I don’t really need the experience. I’m not going into the field, and I’m not planning to get certified. But…I was curious.”

“Curiosity is not a sin, beta,” Castiel told her. “And it isn’t against the law for you to paddle a Lupin, provided everything that you do together is consensual.”

“Then why does it feel icky now that we’re talking about it?” she blurted. “I feel guilty, like I…like we had an affair or something, but it wasn’t like that at all.”

Cas pursed his lips in thought. “We need to explore that further, Sarah. I would hazard a guess that whatever is making you feel icky isn’t shared by Sam. I would guess that it’s exclusive to your being Primate and the fact that the pathways that define vulnerability and intimacy for you generally connect to your sexuality. Even though it wasn’t a sexual experience, you may be incapable of fully separating your sexual side from your vulnerable side. However…” He slid off the table and began to roll his sleeves up past his elbows. Sarah noticed a wicked-looking paddle on the table behind where he’d been perched, and she blanched. “That is for another time. Right now, we have more pressing business.”

“I’m really very sorry, Cas!”

“Your use of my name is forfeit for the duration of this encounter, beta. Call me Sir or Alpha.”

“Right. Sorry, Sir. I forgot.”

“You get one warning.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Do you have any questions or concerns? You may speak freely.”

“Alpha, I’m scared. That’s all. Once we’re done here, I’ll be okay, but could we maybe just…do it?”

He huffed a soft laugh. “Yes, we can. I appreciate your candor. Honestly, in bringing you into the Pack, this moment was my chief worry. I don’t think either of us could have said with certainty that we would survive our first correction and maintain our connection as Pack. That you showed up for your punishment, right on time, and that you haven’t made any attempt to thwart it, speaks volumes toward your commitment to this Pack and your respect of me as its leader. I thank you for that show of trust.”

“What do I do?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“Face the table. Stand up against it,” he told her, pointing. “Drop your pants. I need to see what I’m striking. Then lean across the table and take hold of the opposite side.”

Sarah pushed her pants and panties down with shaking hands. Her blouse was a long one, and it covered her to mid-thigh, but he didn’t seem bothered, so she left it on. She settled her weight onto the table, and she concentrated on breathing as she clutched the far edge.

“Widen your stance for me,” Alpha told her. “Little bit more. Good. Right there.”

She felt the impossibly naked sensation of drafting air on her backside as he lifted the tail of her blouse and set it up across her back. She was bare from her mid-back to her calves, and she felt far more nude than she ever had during sex. She tucked her chin into the hollow of her throat and felt her humid breath fog the gleaming wood of the table beneath her.

“We start with an open palm, beta,” she heard him say. “That prevents injury. Brace yourself.”

“Sir,” she mumbled as her grip tightened.

And then his flat palm came down on her cheek. The pressure was the first thing to register. Then the sound, magnified by the high ceiling. Then the sting. She sucked in a shocked breath and rolled to the side as his hand popped down again.

“OW!”

“Steady,” he corrected. “Back into position. Do not move, Sarah.”

“That hurts!!”

“Indeed. It is meant to. Don’t move from this spot.”

“I’m sorry! I’m ready.” She got herself centered again and closed her eyes tightly. She’d witnessed so many spankings by this point that she’d become blasé about them, no longer really processing the power and pain that each swat brought to bear until it was her upturned backside that was rapidly turning red.

She cried out with each hit, sobbing against the table and bending her knees. It hurt so much worse than she’d expected, and a part of her goggled at the fact that she wasn’t bowling past him and barreling out of the house, never to return. But as she lay there, feeling the heat, the burn, the sting build on itself, all she could think was that she’d earned it and once it was over she’d be forgiven.

A comforting hand circled her lower back in a gentle touch. She was hard-pressed not to reach back and rub the sting out of her ass, but she diverted that impulse by holding tighter to the table’s edge.

“Very good,” praised the Alpha. “That was thirty, and I’m not going easy on you. You’re very brave, Sarah. This paddle will feel quite different, and I expect you’ll find it significantly nastier. You’re getting ten. I will pause as often as you need me to. We begin when you’re ready.”

Sarah shuffled her feet a bit and wiped her snotty nose on her arm. She huffed hard a few times. Looking back over her shoulder, she found him watching her, waiting patiently.

“Where?” she asked. “Where are you going to aim?”

“Are you familiar with the correctional classifications we use onsite?” he asked.

She nodded.

“This is a class 4-B correction. The paddle will be aimed across both cheeks, the significant majority of strikes will hit the meat of your backside, in the middle of the roundest part of each cheek. But you can expect me to land more than one swat to the crease at the top of your thighs. I’m sure you’re aware that your legs are more sensitive to pain than your backside is. Does that answer your question?”

She sobbed and nodded. For the infraction, it was as mild a correction as he could reasonably have leveled against her. He was going easy on her after all. She castigated herself for being a baby.

“Are you ready?”

She nodded again, and then she discovered that she wasn’t ready at all. So startled was she by the pain that she flared up from the table and stumbled backward five or six steps with her hands clasping her ass like a toddler. She stared at him in shock, speechless as tears continued down her cheeks.

“We decide right here in this moment, beta,” he told her calmly. “If you walk away, the world will not come to a screeching halt. You do not lose your thesis project. You will merely need to find a new apartment. This is my Pack, you see, and membership in it requires submission to my will. You are not one of us by birth. Are you one of us by choice? It’s your call.”

Sarah was humiliated, half naked and tripping over her own pants. Her backside burned miserably, and she felt immensely stupid. If anyone she knew ever saw her like this, she would die on the spot. But she couldn’t look away from his eyes. There was truth there, and power, and a determination to let her hold the reins, and a gentle kindness that didn’t fit with the strength of his paddle arm. His eyes told her they were in this together, and he wasn’t going to walk away unchanged either.

She sobbed hard, and it shook her whole body.

“What do you want, beta?” he asked her carefully.

“I want to be forgiven,” she told him through wracking sobs.

“The way through to forgiveness is painful. I don’t know if this is right for you, love. I only know it’s the only way for _us_, and I want you to be one of us. What do you want?”

“I want to be yours,” she cried.

He nodded, and she watched his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “You have nine more, Sarah. You can do this. But you don’t owe anyone more than you can afford to give. Only you know what you can afford to give.”

She nodded, rubbing at her ass. Slowly, she stumbled forward again, feeling foolish walking a stutter-step with her pants at her ankles. She laid back down and she reached across the table. Just like before, he lifted her shirt-tail and settled it over her back.

“Nine more. Don’t move. Ask for a break if you need one, but I’ll advise you that very often, breaks hinder more than they help. Nod to me when you’re ready.”

She breathed out, imagined a peaceful lake surface in the early morning, with mist unbroken over its surface, and she nodded.

Then there was fire everywhere. Everything burned and ached. The sting was intolerable, and it built and built and built until she screamed and lifted her feet right off the ground, pulling her body halfway across the table’s surface. Every nerve fiber fired, and her bloodstream was flooded with so much adrenalin, she felt like she could fly.

And then it was over, and she bawled into the table. She flinched when she heard the paddle set down beside her with a soft thunk, and Castiel wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and eased her off the table and into his arms.

He shushed her quietly and rocked her, praising her in a whisper. “So good,” he murmured. “So brave. I’m so very proud of you. You’re a Winchester, Sarah. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. You have grit. You’re so strong. Shh. Shh. It’s okay. Take a breath now. You’re okay.”

He began chuckling softly as her sobs softened to a hiccuppy dribble. “There now,” he crooned. “We both lived. Let’s get you dressed and then you can stand at the end of the table and wait for Sam. The two of you will need to sleep it off.” He knelt down and helped her untangle the fabrics of her underwear and pants, holding her steady as she dressed herself.

She sniffled, feeling quite accomplished indeed, vanishing the offhand worry she hadn’t known she was carrying that he would go too easy on her. He hadn’t. She knew she wasn’t calibrated to be sure how much power he’d put into his swing, but there was no way he’d lessened his swats very much. Maybe he’d reduced the count to account for her being ape, but he’d applied himself with power. She could tell there would be bruises, and as weak as her legs felt, she had no desire to sit at the moment.

“Don’t …” *sniffle* “… don’t you usually make your punishee stand in the corner when they’re done?” She wondered if she was pushing her luck, but he only smiled and shook his head.

“No, love. What I do following a paddling is whatever is needed by the person I’m correcting. You don’t need any more humiliation than you’ve already withstood. I would ask you to stay for Sam’s sake, if you can bear to. You don’t have to.”

“I’ll stay,” she nodded. “If Sam wants me to.”

“Thatta girl,” he told her. She was shocked at the warmth and pride that his praise sent through her bloodstream. She felt a rush of affection and trust, and she threw her arms around him, bursting into tears again. He hugged her close, rocking her subtly from side to side. A shift at the door caught his attention, and he looked up without letting her go.

“Come in Samuel. We’re finishing up here.”

“Sir,” Sam said, ducking his head submissively and coming all the way in.

“Would you find it a comfort if Sarah stays for you?” Cas asked him simply.

Sam looked surprised. “Oh. Yes, please. If she wants to, that is. Thank you.”

Cas looked down at her, and she wiped her eyes with her knuckles and nodded up at him. Cas indicated a good spot for her with a jut of his chin and a gentle nudge to her back. She shuffled awkwardly to the end of the long table, bracing herself upright on her arms.

Sam shot her a nervous half-smile, his face drawn and remorseful.

“Go ahead, Samuel,” Castiel prompted, moving the paddle out of the way. Sam tracked it with his eyes. He shoved his jeans down and took his position without further direction. He was ridiculously out of proportion for the height of the table, but instead of laying across it, he braced himself on his arms, merely bending over at the waist a bit. It was enough. Cas rolled his shirt-tail up out of the way.

“Talk to me, Samuel,” the Alpha prompted. “Why are you here?”

Sarah saw the muscles in his flank flex. He was incredibly muscular across his hip and down his leg. She couldn’t look away, even as she heard him huff a hard breath before he spoke.

“I dropped the ball, Alpha,” he admitted. “I forgot the scope we all agreed to, and I let my enthusiasm override my good sense. I put our whole agenda at risk by breaking a core tenet as well as federal assault laws. I failed my students. I failed my protégé.” Sam caught Sarah’s eye at that and sent her a wordless apology. “I failed my Pack and myself. I failed you. It won’t happen again, Alpha. I swear to you.”

Sarah saw Castiel’s face clench up as he struck Sam’s ass with the flat of his hand. Sam whimpered, but he didn’t break form. Cas swatted him a good ten or twelve times before he spoke again.

“What did you do, specifically, beta?”

Sam had to talk through the painful swats, as Castiel picked them right back up again, and Sam’s voice shook with the power of Castiel’s hand.

“I broke the ‘no contact’ rule, Sir! I spanked and paddled Primate – aargh! – Primate students, in violation of my agreement with you…Aaahhh!....and in violation of the law! I’m not permitted to touch Primates! No Lupin is permitted to touch Primates in a professional – oomph – capacity!”

Castiel didn’t pause as he continued the conversation.

“Was that rule unclear to you at the outset, Samuel?”

“No, SIR! It was … clear! I just forgot! I should’ve come to you!”

Castiel stepped back, his breath coming heavy with the exertion. Sam slouched into his braced arms, relieved and panting.

“So we understand one another?” Castiel asked vaguely.

“Yes, Alpha,” Sam nodded vehemently.

“Good. I trust this won’t happen again. Go to the umbrella stand in the foyer and fetch me my switch.”

“Yessir,” Sam said shakily. He pushed himself off and ambled awkwardly out the door, returning quickly with a shuffling half quick-step. He had a wicked switch in his shaky hand.

“Back over,” Cas said, taking the switch from him.

Sarah found herself trembling with second-hand mortification. Sam’s backside was a shiny, cherry-red as he doubled back over, going down onto his elbows this time and dropping his head between his arms. Castiel fussed about with his shirt-tail again, but he was clearly done talking.

Sarah flinched hard when the switch sang fiercely through the air and popped an instant stripe on Sam’s ass. She saw his eyes squeeze shut, and his hands clench into fists, one around the other, but he didn’t budge. Another whistle, another pop, and a loud groan from Sam. Another stripe.

In the end, there were ten stripes, all perfectly aligned, all an angry, blistering red, swelling to welts. None of them bled at all, and Sarah couldn’t account for that at all considering the power she’d witnessed behind the swing. But Sam was standing back up, and he was shaking a heartfelt apology as Castiel wrapped him in an engulfing embrace. Sam had his arms tucked inside the hug, still clutching one hand in the other and shaking as he cried. Sarah felt a tear slide down her cheek. She wiped it away, turning her eyes to look at the wetness on her fingers.

She breathed out, feeling all of the tension leave her body with her exhale. Looking up, she found Castiel holding an arm out to her in welcome, and she dove into his embrace, wrapping her arm around Sam’s back too and adding soft words of pride and comfort to the litany coming from the Alpha.

Sam didn’t cry long. He pulled back and smiled gamely at her through his tears before kicking off his jeans and working his boxers carefully into place over a throbbing backside. 

“Thank you, Sir,” he said seriously. “I believe I heard you loud and clear.”

“Good,” Cas replied. “I would hate to have to repeat myself. Please return the switch to the umbrella stand and find somewhere suitable to curl up and take a nap, somewhere that isn’t exclusively private, if you don’t mind. Perhaps the first floor living room?”

Sam smiled again, fighting through the pain to keep his game face on. “Alpha, I can’t nap. Jess needs me to watch the boys. She’s got errands to run.”

Castiel nodded in acceptance. “Understood. But ask for help if you need a break, Sam. Sarah, unless you have anything further to discuss, you’re dismissed. You, I want sleeping. No excuses.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“And Sarah?”

“Sir?” she paused in the doorway. Sam slipped by her with the horrible switch in his hand.

“I love you immensely. That doesn’t alter when I call you to stand to account for your misdeeds. It’s critical that you understand that.”

“Yes, Alpha. I understand. I love you, too, Sir.”

He grinned boyishly. “Go on. Find a soft couch somewhere and get some sleep. I’ll check on you in a bit.”

“Thank you, Alpha.” She felt her face heat up as a blush surprised her. Why was she blushing? What she felt was the throb of her heartbeat echoing through the pain in her backside and a bottomless affection for the man in front of her.

If it was Stockholm Syndrome, it was the worst case of it she’d ever heard tell of.

In the grand foyer, Sam was waiting to help her up the stairs. He settled her on her side on the longest couch in the gameroom, the one he promised was the best napping couch in the entire house, and he fetched her a soft woven blanket and a glass of water.

She grabbed his arm as he started to leave. “Sam, you took far worse than I did. I should be taking care of you.”

He chuckled. “No, sweetheart. Today was your first go. It’ll never feel that bad ever again. Yours was worse. Get some sleep. It’s going to hurt for a couple of days.”

“Ugh!” she exclaimed. “Oh, and just for the record, the anticipation? _NOT_ the worst part.”

Sam grinned, kissed her forehead and then left her rolling miserably, hunting for a comfortable position to sleep in.

“Hey,” Jess greeted as he joined her at the doorway. “She okay?”

“She’ll heal.”

“Babe, quick question,” Jess opened as she wrapped an arm around his waist and helped him limp down the hall.

“Shoot.”

“What would you say if I said I wanted to apply to work for Cas?”

Sam threw his head back and laughed. “I’d say I’m thrilled,” he told her with a tight squeeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! That was crazy long. And I know I said I would be breaking to think shit through. But breaking and organizing turned into writing out ideas, which turned into writing a chapter. It happens.
> 
> Shingles still suck. I've had enough of this crap. Get the vaccine. Not even kidding.
> 
> Hugs and Kisses!


	4. Friday, December 14, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael's hit a snag in his hands-on training and it's going to take a creative solution to help him past it, a solution that his mate may not appreciate. Dean's got his pups to help him de-stress, but he's also got a husband. Will Dean's brave new approach pay off? Also, what's that about the Grammy's?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. We've been busy over here at wolf-central. New reference guides on the way. Thanks to [Andi4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andi4/pseuds/Andi4) for the nudge to think through the punishment classifications and do more than wing it. Thanks also to [Melodina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melodina/pseuds/Melodina) for the hard work of getting it together and making it both pretty and readable. If you're subscribed to the series, you should get a ping when we load it.
> 
> Thanks to [Jennyfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennyfly/pseuds/jennyfly) for the collage as usual. Your work makes me drool.
> 
> I'm also working on putting the Winchester Pack Rules onto publishable shingles that we'll put out for reference as per request.
> 
> If there are any other useful references that y'all would like to see, hit me up. If it's not hard to put together, I'll probably say yes.

Michael licked his lips as a drop of sweat found its way over his eyebrow and threatened his eye. He scrubbed it off with the white sleeve of his lab coat, frowned in concentration, and focused back down on his work with the tip of his tongue caught in his teeth. The procedure had never been this hard in his classes, but then of course, those had been silicone dummies, not real people, and the penis size on the dummies was about average for a beta.

Omegas were smaller.

Way smaller.

The tip of the catheter slipped free again. Michael stood back up and squeezed his eyes shut, taking a breather. The patient had his own arm over his eyes, and his fist was clenched tightly enough to turn his fingers white. Poor kid. He didn’t deserve this.

“Re-lube it, Michael, and try again. Move your grip up just a little.”

“Which grip?” Michael asked.

“On the tube, obviously. If you slide any further up his penis, you’ll cover the tip. Easy now. Relax.”

Michael pressed his lips together and then re-gripped with both hands and aimed the lubed tube at the tiny slit, a slit that was becoming more taut as he tried ineffectively to feed the tube into it. Michael huffed through his wolf.

“He’s engorging again,” Michael muttered. He sighed and stepped back. Stripping his gloves off and dropping them into the waste can, Michael stood as far from the patient as he could get and turned his back. He could feel the man’s eyes on him, and he could feel his wolf react to it.

“It sucks to be beautiful, I know,” Jody told him flatly. “But you have a job to do. Get back in there, Michael.”

“He’s erect, Jody!” Michael pointed pointlessly. “I can’t hit the bladder with him like this.”

“You’ll be able to with some experience. It’s not impossible, just uncomfortable. For now though, let’s try to return him to an unaroused state. So what do you do now?” Her voice rolled back down in tension, reminding him that getting stirred up wasn’t helping.

“I…uh…we need to soothe him back down.” Michael approached the poor guy’s head and ran fingers through his hair, hoping to help him relax a little. He shushed the man softly. He preened in the heady adoration the man cast up at him. It was a rush.

“I know it’s rough,” Michael cooed. “I’m really sorry this is turning out to be such an ordeal. I’m new at this. You can probably tell. But hang in there for me, okay? I may not be quick, but I’m not gonna hurt you. We’ll get through it together. Are you with me?”

“That’s not helping kill his boner, trainee,” Jody commented. “He’s developing a crush on you, and you’re feeding his medical kink. You need to disengage and get the job done. We’re going to have to use ice.”

“Not yet,” Michael said firmly. “Ice sucks. I’m not doing that to him if I don’t have to.”

“You need to stop touching and talking to him. Step away.”

“Give me a minute!” Michael snapped.

Jody’s face flattened. She took two measured steps backward and then stopped pointedly, crossing her arms over her chest. Michael worked his jaw in frustration and then looked back down at the man on the table. Michael pulled his wolf forward, and the man’s pupils dilated instantly.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Michael told him, still stroking his hair away from his face. “You’re going to picture something really repulsive in your head, and you’re going to close your eyes. Think of a pile of earthworms in your lap. We’re going to try again, Omega. I need you to imagine yourself away from here. I need you to be good for me…”

“Michael…”

“Shut it, Jody! Let me work!”

Her lips popped as she stepped back up again. “Omega, I need to speak with you in my office, please.” There was a forced politeness to the tone of her voice. “Right now.”

Michael stood up straight and rolled his eyes heavenward. “Fine.”

“Glad you can see your way clear to humble yourself for little old me,” she smiled at him with malice and gestured to the door in the corner that led into a small private office.

The door snapped closed behind her, and the smile disappeared.

“Take the lab coat off, Omega,” she snapped ruthlessly. “And the scrubs. Now.”

Michael’s eyes widened comically, but his mouth had other ideas. “What is your problem?” he asked rudely.

“Shut up. Take your shirt off.”

“What? No!”

“We’re on my time, Michael, and the clock’s ticking. Do it. Shirt. Off. Pants down at your knees. You have to the count of two to comply.”

“Two?! What the hell, Jody? Look, I’m sorry I questioned your authority in there. I get it. That was a shit move.”

“One.”

Michael frowned but he unbuttoned the lab coat and pulled his scrub top over his head, perplexed. Without another word, Jody collected a coil of rope from her desk drawer and looped its center around Michael’s neck, leaving a tied loop hanging between his shoulder blades.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Standing very close to him and choking up on the loop of rope at his throat, Jody’s face was all business. “I’m binding you. You’ve forgotten who’s in charge in that room, so I’m giving you a reminder. Whatd’ya say, Omega? Are you gonna be a man about this, or do I need to summon some muscle?”

Michael swallowed hard. “You can’t do this,” he whispered.

“Oh, it’s happening, kiddo. We can do it the easy way or the hard way. One way or another though, you’re not leaving this room without my rope around your body, not if you plan to continue in this program.”

“Jody, please,” Michael whined. “I said I was sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Drop your pants.”

“This isn’t necessary! Message received. You have my word I’ll be respectful…”

“Drop. Your. Pants! This isn’t a joke, and it’s not a threat. We’re doing this. Get ‘em down and then arms up.”

“Look, I get it. You’re in charge…”

With a surprising amount of strength for a beta, Jody hauled him in and yanked his scrubs down. “Widen your stance. Lace your fingers behind your head. And I swear to God if you so much as snarl at me, mister, you’ll regret it forever.”

Slowly, miserably, Michael brought both arms up and laced his fingers together behind his head. His Omega training had cemented certain conditioned responses so irrevocably that Michael’s wolf found itself shunted into a dark steel cage somewhere too deep to reach. Jody began to tie a series of knots down the length of the ropes hanging from his neck, and she talked as she worked.

“Here’s the thing, Michael. We’ve discussed this before, haven’t we? What we have here is a pattern. A pattern of poor decisions. Every time we call you on it you swear it’s the last time. You swear you’ve learned your lesson…” Jody split the two ropes at his belly button and ran each strand between his legs on opposite sides of his junk before tying them off on the loop at the back of his neck, leaving two long strands hanging freely down the center of his back.

She rounded him to stand in front of him again, testing the pull and the give, adjusting the slack. “But you still haven’t, have you?” She reached around his chest to draw both ends around his torso beneath his raised arms to begin tying in the tortoiseshell pattern. “You make the same rookie mistake again and again, and you won’t take any coaching from anyone. You’re unteachable, Michael. That has to change. So, we’re gonna try a little something different. Comfy?”

“No.”

“Here, this’ll help.” She left the ropes dangling in front as she readjusted the pants of his scrubs back into place and tied the drawstring a little tighter. “Don’t need your pecker hanging out anymore. The rest is all upper body ties. Stand still for me and listen.”

“Jody, please. This is humiliating.”

“It doesn’t have to be, Michael, but your humiliation is not my concern right now. Right now, all I’m concerned with is that Ozzie patient in there who has the hots for you, and my Omega-Dom student who’s eating it up. This is what we talked about.” Jody continued tying the pattern around him as she talked, ignoring his mortification and praying he would take heed this time. She was getting desperate for a way to get through to him. She couldn’t draw his mentorship out forever.

“You,” she said with a jab at his sternum, “are not in play in that room. Michael, there _is no_ play in that room. This is not a scene, and you cannot allow it, much less _encourage_ it, to become one. Your responsibility is to catheterize that patient and then finish the evaluation so we can finish what we’re here to do and send him home. You don’t matter in this equation! Get out of it! Disengage, damnit!”

“I can’t help it if he finds me attractive, beta! I’m not going to slap ice on his willie just because he gets a hard-on! Do you have any idea how much ice _hurts?_” Michael was trembling with how miserable he was, and it fed his anger. He couldn’t lash out the way he wanted to. He couldn’t risk being ejected from the program. He’d come too far. But he was livid. “But then, what do you care if it hurts? You’re a….”

Jody’s hand grabbed his chin and wrenched it downward to look right into her eyes, and Michael froze, caught in the hierarchy where his Omega was weaker.

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, you little asshole. Don’t tempt me, Michael.” Jody was beyond livid, and Michael gaped. “I have given you every chance! I’ve bent over backward to accommodate your designation, and I’ve allowed you to be disrespectful to me in a way I’ve never allowed from _anyone!_ That ends right now. Do you hear me? It all ends. I am the instructor. You are the student. From here on, you listen. You obey. You learn. You say, yes ma’am and no ma’am. You jump when I say jump.”

Michael was off balance with his hands linked behind his head, but he stumbled a bit and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Jody’s jaw twitched while she finished his binding in silence. Finishing up, she handed him back his shirt followed by his lab coat, and he dressed himself with shaking hands. He rolled his shoulders in discomfort as the _Hishi Karada_ tie pulled in odd ways.

“You’ll wear that for the rest of the day, and you’ll have one of your alphas from home call me this evening for permission to remove it,” she told him coldly. Michael froze in the process of fastening the last button of his lab coat.

“No…” he breathed.

“Dean or Castiel, Michael. Your choice. I expect a phone call from one of them tonight. If I learn that anyone else removed this rope from your body, you’re done. You’re already on the last strike. It only takes one more, and I won’t hesitate to pull the lever. Don’t test me. Your memory needs a little help keeping your ego out of your work, Omega. Let this rope help you remember. Now. Kneel and let me finish what I need to say.”

Michael didn’t hesitate this time. He sank to his knees, still miserable, but casting his eyes ahead to having to tell Dean or Cas that he was wearing a rope corset as a punishment.

“A pattern, Michael,” Jody said. She rounded her desk, leaving him kneeling before it. She stood behind her chair and frowned down at him. “At this point, it’s becoming more than a pattern. It’s becoming conditioned. You lean into their attraction, feeding your own wolf off the eroticism, and you feast while your client suffers.”

“I can’t help it if they find me hot! What am I supposed to do?”

“You separate your ego and your appetite, and you do the damn job!” she responded fiercely back. “It’s not about you!”

Michael looked away, blushing.

Jody leaned down on her desk, pinning him with her eyes. “We’ve been over this time and time again. You cannot engage when the client is looking for you to do that. You are not a Contractor, and this is not a scene! You need to start _listening_ to your instructors. We’ll guide you through tough moments. We’ve all been there, Michael. You’re not the first therapist who encounters an erection during a routine procedure. It happens all the time. Bodies do things their owners can’t control. But you can’t let it go to your head and convince you that you’re a god, and you can’t offer patients a handjob to get rid of a stiffy. You have to turn it off. Turn it off from _your_ end. Disengage and put the client’s needs in front of your own.”

Michael blushed harder, staring hard at the front of her desk. “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.

“I’ll admit, Omega, I’m out of ideas,” Jody continued sadly. “If this doesn’t work, we need to seriously evaluate if this program is right for you. I tell you that with all the affection I have for you, for your mate. You and your family mean the world to me. But I can’t put clients in front of you if you can’t stop snacking on them. This is your very last chance.”

“Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

“Lord, I hope so,” she breathed. “Come on. On your feet. Let’s try this again.”

Michael sighed as he stood up. His posture was ramrod straight, and he moved in a way that spoke of discomfort on every level. “The hole is so much smaller than the one on the dummy,” he groused.

“No, it’s not,” Jody chided softly. “That’s a psychological block. The size of the organ is smaller, but the opening is about the same. Take your time. Don’t get him worked up. Use the cool pack if you need it. Come on.”

Jody led the way back into the clinic room where they found a wide-eyed Ozzie feverishly wiping jizz off his own belly with the paper drape over his torso.

“Sorry,” he panted. “Sorry. Kinda…got away from me.”

Jody chuckled, handing him a couple of moistened paper towels. “Well that solves that problem.” She looked to Michael and took her spot back near the wall.

“Uh, right. If you’ll just lie back down like you were. We’ll finish up. Sorry to keep you waiting.” Michael took the towels out of his hands and tossed them before washing his own and stretching on a new pair of gloves. He didn’t look at the man’s face. He didn’t speak to him beyond what he needed to say to instruct. Michael kept his body turned slightly away and pretended the patient wasn’t a person for the moment.

This time, the traitorous tube slid right into place with no hard bargaining. Michael earned a simple nod of approval from his mentor as he fed it in and fixed it. He covered the man back up with a new paper sheet, and he explained that the catheter needed to remain in place for a couple of days to track his output.

“One more quick procedure before your mate can take you home,” Michael told him, maintaining a detached persona. “We’re going to administer an enema to take all the pressure off and then take a look at your cervix. It won’t hurt, and it won’t take long.”

“I just had a physical a couple of months ago,” the man whined as Michael helped him roll to his side.

“I know,” Michael told him, feeling a nudge from his wolf who wanted to throw in an extra layer of comfort to the nervous Ozzie. Michael waved it back into the shadows, noting that Jody was watching him very closely. “Remember, we talked about this. Your physical didn’t turn up any medical reason for your block. Your physician referred you to us to see if we can figure out what’s causing you to freeze up in the middle of sex. All your plumbing works from a medical perspective.”

Michael worked as he talked, so the enema was a warm presence in the Ozzie’s gut before he really even processed that Michael’s fingers had inserted the nozzle.

“What we’re doing today,” he continued blandly, soporifically, “is getting all the baselines we need to tell us what your body functions are like at a normal, unaroused state. Once we know that, we can check for what changes when you and your mate come back next week and hit the sheets in the lab. If that goes well, your body will do for us what it’s been doing to you in private, and we’ll be able to narrow in on what’s not working the way it’s designed to.”

“And what if it’s not me,” the Ozzie said quietly. “What if it’s _him_?”

Michael managed his reaction carefully, staying at an unprovoked level and slipping the nozzle back out. He eased the man up and helped him stand, minding the fluid bag strapped to his thigh and helping him toward the toilet. He caught Jody’s eye and got a slight nod. There was a reason the alpha mate was in the waiting room for these simple preliminary procedures.

Michael stood back a little and let him settle onto the toilet on his own. When he was empty, Michael was there to guide him back to the table. He maintained his silence until the man was seated on the side of the exam bed. Michael set his hand on the man’s shoulder and waited until frightened brown eyes met his own.

“Ian, does your mate hurt you when he fucks you? On purpose, I mean. Does he ever hurt you in a way you don’t like? It’s okay to tell me, Omega. We can keep you safe. We can help.”

“What? No, of course not!”

Michael nodded. He patted the side of his client’s thigh and edged him into lying back down. Michael guided his feet into the stirrups. “I hear you,” Michael said calmly. He couldn’t deny the spiky scent of terror that had struck just for a moment and then dissipated, but he couldn’t force anything either. “Knees out wide for me, please.” Michael took his spot at the end of the table and touched the back of his gloved hand to the inside of the Omega’s thigh. Tension struck like a lightning bolt, and the man’s knees shot together, clipping Michael’s shoulder.

“Oh, shit. Sorry. Sorry. I’m good.”

Michael didn’t flinch. “It’s okay. You haven’t done anything wrong. There you go, good and wide. I’m not going to hurt you. So, you enjoy sex with your mate?” Michael continued, leaning in and taking the lubed speculum that Jody passed to him.

“Yeah, of course,” came the stilted answer. “Until my channel closes up, and everything freezes and hurts. That’s not exactly fun.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.” Michael used one hand to hold the man’s cheeks apart, and he fitted the speculum in with the other, opening it wide once it was all the way inserted. He heard a strangled groan from up the table. He caught Jody’s eye again and read her mind, noting that inserting the speculum had not been difficult in the slightest, and that the man was self-lubricating around it as Michael worked. His plumbing was indeed fully functional. His tiny prick was straining to engorge again, tugging at the catheter tube that was taped to his thigh. Michael pulled the tape loose without a word, freeing his cock to reach for the sky if it wanted to without pulling painfully.

Jody handed Michael a small camera on a rigid cord, and Michael fed it through the opening his tool was holding wide. Eyes fastened to the small screen at his client’s shoulder, Michael quickly snapped a series of pictures. He didn’t see any physical scarring, but sometimes scars weren’t visible.

“Ian, do you mind if I ask you another question?” Michael asked as he removed the camera, handing it over his shoulder to Jody.

“I guess not.”

“Can you tell me what punishments are like at your house? What does your mate do to correct you?”

“I get the belt if I’m really bad,” he answered. He didn’t blush. “Usually it’s just an OTK with his open hand.” He didn’t seem to be feeling any shame about punishments.

“How does he Release your Omega gland?”

“Same way. I Release super easy. If sex doesn’t do it, a quick spanking always finishes it off.”

Michael nodded again. That jibed with what he’d read in the Omega’s notes. He closed the speculum with a click and eased it out, watching for the ooze of Omega slick that followed and noting its color, consistency, and odor. Everything looked normal there. Michael tugged a couple of wipes out of the dispenser and started to clean the Ozzie’s backside, but a move from Jody and a sense that she was moments away from clearing her throat spurred Michael to hand the wipes to the patient instead.

Awkwardly, the man reached down and wiped the lube and extra slick away from his backside. Michael helped him sit up. He considered how to approach his next question and then decided to try Omega-to-Omega, in camaraderie.

“Look, Ian, I believe you, okay? I do. But something’s spooking you, and I think you know what it is. I’m asking you to trust me enough to tell me. If you can. What’s going on during your scenes that your body sees no alternative but to lock all the entry doors and put up a ‘Closed for Business’ sign?”

The Omega shook his head. His eyes stared over Michael’s shoulder at the far wall, going blank. His knees trembled with how tightly they pressed together.

“Ian, please. I can help you if you tell me. I swear I can.”

“He loves me,” the man replied without emotion. “I know he does. He would never hurt me.”

“_Someone’s_ been hurting you. Is it someone else? Is there someone besides your mate?”

Ian’s head shook desperately, sending his hair splaying outward in its wake.

“Hey, shh. Shh. Calm down. Let go of the table, Omega. You’re gonna break your fingers.” Michael eased up close to him and took hold of his biceps in a firm grip. Jody stepped around the table to lean against him from behind, sandwiching him, and the poor man sobbed.

“There’s no one else, Sir! It’s just us! But he would…never. He loves me!”

“I’m sure he does. Um, Ian, have you ever seen his wolf directly?”

Ian went so still he stopped breathing. Horror looked out through his eyes, and his hands took hold of Michael at the elbows. His fingers were claws, attaching like talons to Michael’s arms. “He would never hurt me,” he whispered. Michael reached back to catch him by both hands and hold his frigid hands warmly, massaging them.

“No, love,” Michael soothed. “Your mate wouldn’t hurt you. Good boy. You did so good for us today. We’re going to help you both. I promise. Why don’t you lie down for a minute? It’s okay if you take a little nap. I need to type up some notes before we go back out there.” Michael licked his lips in visceral discomfort. Slipping into his front brain dominant to ease the Ozzie’s stress came instinctively, and Jody didn’t fault him for it. It was an entirely different response pattern than what Michael’s wolf had been doing inappropriately on the regular for weeks.

Jody fetched a thin blanket and flipped the lights off as Michael soothed the Omega on his table into closing his eyes.

Michael sat in Jody’s visitor’s chair with his fingers steepled beneath his lips, thinking. His notes were open and spread out in front of her, and she skimmed through them, pausing every now and then before nodding and moving on.

“Tell me,” she said eventually. She looked up at Michael and sat back in her chair.

Michael scratched his upper lip. “I boils down to a training issue,” he told her shaking his head in frustration. “Everyone is adamant about training Ozzies until they’re programmed sex robots, but the vast majority of alphas still get by with little to no training at all. We know the mate is alpha-Dominant, but until we apply to have his Keller report released to us, we don’t know what kind of wolf he’s got barely chained up in there. He’s a sweetheart until his engines get revved, and then the ugly side comes out, a side that no one has any control over. Afterward, all the alpha remembers is a mind-blowing orgasm, and the Omega is left to deal with the trauma alone. I’ll bet the alpha has no idea what his own wolf is up to. Bet he’s never been allowed in the room with his wolf while the hard shit’s going down. And the Omega is too terrified to tell him.”

“Why do you call it a training issue instead of a case of mate abuse?” Jody asked keenly. “You making excuses for the man? There aren’t many Tertiaries with the clout to hide their actions from their own Secondaries.”

Michael thought about it with a frown and shook his head. “It could be abuse, Jody, but I saw the two of them together. It doesn’t feel like abuse. I mean, don’t get me wrong. That alpha _is_ abusing his mate. I just don’t think it’s the alpha in control when it happens. I don’t think his wolf even lets him see what’s happening. It may be rare, but it’s not unheard of. It’s the wolf who’s violating his mate, not the alpha. If he’d taken the alpha and the Dominant classes like he should’ve before he Mated that boy, he’d know how to control his wolf. It’s a training issue for our whole species, Jody. Don’t you see? Training Bottoms is window-dressing. It makes them pretty, sellable, shiny… It doesn’t make any difference in real life though, day to day. It’s the Tops who have all the power to cause harm, and our society still doesn’t value teaching them how to touch their own loved ones without scarring them. Guys like that…he’s thirty-three years old, and he Mated a seventeen-year-old boy straight outta high school. The Ozzie never stood a chance.”

Jody nodded sagely. “Very good, Michael. What do we do now?”

He huffed. “I wish we could arrest the wolf and leave the alpha at home. Tearing the Ozzie away from his mate isn’t going to fix this.”

“It would keep him from getting raped by his own mate anymore,” Jody added.

But Michael disagreed. “Only in the short term. They’re still mates, and a long separation punishes the Omega more than the alpha. We need to mandate a full course of eval and training for the alpha. He can’t go near his mate sexually until he can do it safely. He needs to learn how to pick his wolf’s lock.”

Jody stood up and came slowly around her desk. She leaned up against it just in front of Michael and looked down at him. “We haven’t had much luck with the courts on that plan. Our courts are geared toward punishing offenders, not teaching them. Prosecution is better than doing nothing. At least that way, the Omega has a chance to heal. We can usually win chaperoned conjugal rights in a case like this. It’s no use trying for something we know we can’t get.”

“What if the alpha can be convinced to do the training without a legal mandate?” Michael suggested feebly. “If we prove to him that what his wolf is doing is real, maybe we can use his love for his own mate to convince him to do the training. We could skip the prosecution altogether and give him a chance to do the right thing.”

Jody held his eye. She didn’t answer.

“Is that really a naïve question?” Michael asked. “Isn’t it at least worth trying? I feel like what’s going on in their house could’ve happened to me if I’d been an alpha. If I was doing that much damage to my own mate, I’d want someone to level with me. I’d do whatever I had to do to straighten my wolf out. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Jody raised her eyebrows. “The worst that can happen is that we clue the wolf in that we’re onto him and he murders Ian in cold blood. He’s not likely to put up with having his chew toy taken away, not without a response. The wolf doesn’t have as strong a connection to his mate as the alpha does. Secondary connections are far stronger. The wolf might decide that compliant Ozzies are dime a dozen, and if he can’t have Ian the way he wants, no one will. He could decide that the pain a broken bond link causes himself is worth it to punish his own alpha designation for turning him in. It’s risky.”

“Goddamn alphas! I swear!” Michael shouted. “Stupid…fucking…privileged…!”

“Michael, calm yourself. That’s not helping. It’s not the alpha causing the mayhem. It’s a psychopathic Dominant Tertiary.” Jody held his eyes meaningfully, both of them remembering an unsettling moment that sat heavy between them.

“How long until we can change the laws about training requirements?” he asked, still spitting mad, struggling to keep his ire focused on the correct target instead of turning it inward or onto his mentor. “We can’t keep letting them in like this with no fucking clue what they’re doing! They’re hurting people!”

“Yes, I know, and it’s been going on for a very long time. We can’t fix eons of disconnect overnight. We’re working on that mandate, Michael. Castiel is working on rewording the bill again. He’s going to send it back up to Congress again, but we don’t have the votes yet. We have to live in the real world, Omega.”

“Cas gives you a rundown on what he’s sending up for legislation?” Michael asked cynically.

Jody chuckled. “There are five or six hard to pass but critical bills that we introduce to every single session of Congress as a matter of course. Mandating that Tops receive training is one of them. It’s not a secret. Lupins have been out of favor in Washington for a few years now, I’m sure you’re aware. And Cas is nothing if not persistent. It’ll happen. We just have to figure out how best to protect Ian in the meantime.”

“Are we going through with next week’s clinical session in the lab with those two?” Michael asked.

“Oh, most definitely. If we can get that fucker on video, Michael, your plan of talking the alpha into learning how to control him gains wings. And with what you managed to discover here today, the clinicians in the lab know what to be watching for. You did good, Omega. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” Michael blushed and rolled his shoulders. “The rope rubs.”

“I know it does.”

“Can’t we please take it off now? I learned my lesson.”

Jody cocked her head jauntily. “Only if staying on as my student isn’t something you value. I’ll cut you loose right now if you want me to.” She winked, damn her.

Michael looked away and tongued his cheek in discomfort.

“I tried to warn you, kiddo,” she added, taking her seat again. “You earned this one. Whoever’s calling me, have him call before seven, would you? I have a show I wanna watch tonight. Now scoot. Go on. I have reports to write.”

“Jody, we sent those mates home together.” Michael hovered in the doorway.

She glanced up at him, and she folded into resignation. “I know. We didn’t have a choice short of charging the alpha right on the spot, and his mate wouldn’t have backed us on that. If it’s any help, I’m guessing that as long as Ian has that catheter in, his alpha isn’t going to touch him. Looked like a revulsive reaction to me. I suspect he’s not as drawn to a medical roleplay as his mate is.” Jody made a fatalistic face, and Michael left her to it.

He walked down the hall with an encumbered gait, fidgeting at the rough feel of hemp between his legs chafing the base of his dick and plying his cheeks apart like a wedgie. Michael had one class left to attend and it wasn’t here. It was across campus. He’d have to walk as there wasn’t sufficient parking to be sure of finding a space color coded to his car’s permit. Walking was going to be brutal. Michael collected his belongings from Dean’s office and left in a hurry, leaving his security escort scrambling to stash his phone, slip his shoes back on, and catch up. Michael was in no mood to babysit a security guard. He was itching for a random bigot alpha to get all up in his grill and start something. If that happened, the first man Michael planned to knock unconscious would be his security guard so he’d have leave to really fuck up someone’s shit. Michael stormed furiously across the street, disappearing down the sidewalk bend leaving his security detail trotting after him.

He nearly tripped over a baby stroller, dodging at the last moment and knocking a plastic sippy-cup flying.

“Jesus Christ!” he cried, scrambling to catch the cup. “Shit! Sorry! My fault, my fault.” Michael danced a little on stumbling feet, all the more discombobulated with the pull of Jody’s rope doing fascinating things under his clothes. He finally caught himself, snatched the cup back up off the ground, and handed it to a harried young man who was holding laughter in unsuccessfully. “Everybody okay?”

“Yeah,” the man giggled. “That was amazing. I think I saw you in Disney on Ice once.”

“Very funny,” Michael huffed. But the incident broke his violent internal chanting. He took a look in the stroller. It was a little girl of about one. She had a satin bow tied haphazardly in her hair, and she was grinning up at the man who was laughing. “She’s cute,” Michael said awkwardly. “Glad I didn’t knock her over. Y’all take care now.”

The man moved off with his stroller, leaving a chuckle and a nod behind. He’d recognized Michael, clearly. Many people did now. Michael glanced at his guard, but he turned and walked on without speaking. Having to walk across his hometown campus with a security escort was embarrassing and emasculating, and Michael wanted like hell to ditch the guy.

He made it to class and abandoned the guard in the hallway, taking a seat at the front of the class. Sitting still in his rope contraption was going to be a nightmare. He could feel it sawing into his sides and the back of his neck.

“Dude, thought you were a Top? What’s with the new necklace?” The voice from behind him came with a hard tug to the loop at his neck. Michael ducked, swatted the hand away, and pulled his shirt up to hide the rope.

“Mind your own business!”

“Pipe down, Winchester, and hands to yourself,” his prof called from the front, preparing to begin the class.

Michael readied a retort, but squelched it, knowing that with the trouble he was already in, taking home a report of mouthing off in class wouldn’t sit well. He felt his wolf snap in the darkness. There were two other Omegas in this class, but they were both essentially throw rugs in terms of life signs. All the focus always hit Michael squarely between the eyes. It was unfair, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do.

“Are we all here?” prompted the professor. “Everyone did the reading? Good. Let’s get started. Today’s discussion is on the differences and similarities of a ‘DROP’ versus a ‘FALL’ and how we respond to each. Who wants to start?”

After class, Michael dropped his security guard off at the Guard house as usual and parked in the garage on his own. He may have puttered about getting his bag re-packed a little longer than necessary, but he really wanted the ropes off, so stalling didn’t make a lot of sense. He’d been forced by the ever-present sensations of the binding into mulling over his behavior during his clinicals, and he felt his face redden in shame. He closed his trunk with a loud bang and trudged to the door.

Might as well get it over with.

Laughter struck him as he opened the door. Dean and Castiel were in hysterics over the Alpha’s attempt to roll out a pie crust. It looked tortured. As did the Alpha himself. He had flour all over him, even in his hair, and tear tracks from his laughter cut trenches through the dusting on his cheeks. Dean kept trying to speak but failing and devolving again into fits, bending at the waist and clutching at his knees.

Tony stood at the island chopping vegetables with an amused expression.

All four pups shared a playpen peacefully, each engaged in their own little explorations.

Michael waited solemnly for the alphas to notice him and shot Dean a terse, “I need to talk to you,” before escaping past Tony through the archway. The ape watched him go without comment.

“Uh,” Dean added eloquently. “Yeah.”

He patted Cas on the shoulder, chuckled a bit, and followed Michael.

In the foyer, just beyond their enormous Christmas tree, Dean caught sight of his mate’s heel disappearing into the front Omega Calling room, and he followed at a jog. “Michael? Babe, what’s up? You okay?”

“Do you have your bonds open?” Michael asked, turning to face him.

“Yeah, of course. What’s wrong?” Dean reached for him, taking him gently by the upper arms and frowning in concern.

“See for yourself. Go in there and look. Couldn’t you feel me?” Michael scrunched up his face to keep from crumbling now that he was home and in private with his mate. He could feel his emotions cresting.

“Hey. What’s the matter? Talk to me, man. I wasn’t focused in on you today. God, Michael, what is all this? What the fuck happened?”

“I…uh…I have to show you something. Promise me you won’t get mad.”

Dean blinked in surprise and stepped back a bit, frowning. “Yeah, man, you got it. I won’t be mad.”

“Really? Just like that?”

Dean shot him a wry look that bitch-slapped him for being stupid. “No. Not really. You know better than that. Tell me everything. If I get mad, we’ll deal with it. Start at the beginning. What happened?”

Michael braced himself with a deep breath and then pulled his shirt over his head. He dropped it on the floor at his feet. Dean’s eyes darkened instantly, turning to a smolder, misreading what he was seeing in its unexpected eroticism. He stepped back up and reached tentative fingers out to trace a line that ran over Michael’s ribs.

“Holy fuck, that’s hot, Sir. How…did you get it tied? How are we going to…?” Dean mumbled, already swirling away in his sensual imaginings and forgetting completely that Michael’s state of mind was distraught, not primal. He didn’t seek Michael’s eyes before slipping down to his knees and taking his own wrist into a fist behind his back.

“Dean. Get up. You misunderstand. Pay attention! I didn’t do this. I didn’t tie it. I don’t _want_ it. I need you to… Dean! Snap out of it. Get up! Alpha, please!” Michael grimaced and hauled Dean back up and set him on his feet. Tears were welling dangerously in Michael’s eyes, and Dean shook his head out like a dog to clear his senses.

“What?” Dean blinked furiously. The hot coursing of adrenalin made him a little dizzy, and he struggled to find center again. “Back up and start over. What is this? Someone bound you?”

“Yes! That’s what I’m telling you. I’m not permitted to take it off. Only you or Alpha can do that. Dean, please! I need you to untie me.”

Dean stared at the knots running down Michael’s midline. He focused closer. “I know these ties. I know who ties knots this way. I’ll bet they’re spaced to her fist-size. This is Jody’s handiwork.”

“Wha…? How did you know that?”

“Who do you think taught me Shibari in the first place?” Dean asked rhetorically. “She did a good job, man. This is beautiful work.”

“Just take it off me, Dean. I’m begging you.”

Dean lifted his palm to Michael, trying to get himself back online. “Hold up. Jody bound you in a rope dress, and you can’t take it off? What’s going on?”

“She wants you to call her, Dean.”

“Oh, I’ll call her all right! This is nonsense! I don’t know who she thinks she…” Dean fumbled his phone from his pocket and had it ringing before he finished ranting. “Hello? Jody, what the fuck? What’d you do to my mate?”

Michael stood shirtless in the middle of the room, feeling profoundly stupid. He heard Jody’s tinny voice asking to be put on speaker and then clear up audibly when Dean complied in confusion.

“Hey, fellas,” she said calmly. “I trust you’ve seen my handiwork.”

“Yeah, beta, looking right at it. What’s this all about, and who’s ass am I kicking?” Dean’s face had taken on a hard light, all planes and angles and a pulsing vein in his throat.

“I leave that decision to you, alpha. I’m not apologizing for the clothesline. Just hear me out.”

“Somebody better start talking,” Dean warned. He pointed to Michael. “Text Cas to get his ass in here, pronto.”

“No, alpha, please,” Michael wheedled, but Dean cut him short with a sharp snap of his fingers and a fearsome look as his eyes suffused with crimson. Michael acquiesced with a pained expression, punching in the short text before stowing his phone in his back pocket.

“Does that corset stop at your waist?” Dean’s face clearly indicated he knew the answer to his question already. And of course he did. He could feel Michael’s rope wedgie now that he was concentrating.

“No, alpha,” Michael admitted uncomfortably. Cas slipped in, closing the door behind him with a perplexed frown. He kept his distance and didn’t speak.

“Take your pants off. Show me. Jody? Beta, you better start talking, and I mean now.”

“I hear ya, alpha. I know it’s an impertinence, but Michael left me few choices. You know he’s already on probation with his program. Dean, he did it again today, and I gotta say, I’m not feeling very generous anymore. He’s had _beaucoup_ chances to figure this out, and he’s just as mouthy and impudent as ever. It was a full-blown case of insubordination. He’s using the clients to stroke his own ego, and it’s putting vulnerable people into unhealthy situations. He snapped my head off when I attempted a redirect.”

“Michael?” Dean prompted.

Michael had had a few hours to consider how to answer the charges Jody made against him, and it was a good thing she had allowed that processing time. He’d needed it. He kept his eyes on his mate’s, not an easy task when his behavior was the very antithesis of Dean’s moral compass.

“I want to be a therapist, Dean. It’s important to me. I fucked up. It won’t happen again. Jody, I’m sorry about the insubordination and the taking advantage of vulnerable clients. It won’t happen again. I swear it. Please, please get this off me.” Michael’s face collapsed, and his tears fell fast and hot. He stood trembling in humiliation with his pants at his thighs and his face in his hands.

Dean cast a look back at his husband by the door. “Alpha?” he asked softly. Cas strode forward, circled around Michael, and began unstringing the ropes. He still hadn’t said a word. His jaw looked carved from marble, and his blue eyes were hard and cold.

“Look, guys,” Jody said through the phone. “He pulled it together before it went too far sideways to save. He did excellent work by the end, and we’re going to have a win on our hands before it’s all said and done with this couple. But he’s way beyond the point in his progress where he should still need training wheels. I’m not overstating things by saying that if something like this ever happens again, I’ll have no choice but to cut him. The clients have to come first.”

“The clients come first,” Castiel agreed at a growl. “Thank you, beta, for watching over all parties involved and finding a way to get them all through it.”

“Jody,” Dean said, still tense. “I wanna see you in my office first thing Monday morning. Don’t go for coffee. Don’t stop off and take a shit. My office. First thing.”

“Yes, alpha.”

Dean ended the call with nostrils flaring, staring daggers at his mate. Michael’s hands were up as Cas methodically unbound him, turning him bodily when necessary, and shifting the rope with care to keep the ends from popping painfully on their way through each loop.

“Sir, it won’t happen again. I swea…”

“Save it! You said that last time!”

Cas broke in with a softer volume but no less fortitude. “Dean, take a walk. You’re in no condition to handle this right now.”

“No offense, Alpha, but he’s _my_ mate!”

“And I’m _your_ Alpha! Take a walk!”

“Fine. I’ll walk. But he’s gonna get what he has coming to him, and he’s gonna get it from _me_, so you keep that in mind if you start swinging and you care if he has any ass left at the end, because frankly, I don’t.”

Dean stormed out the door, tripping over Portia on her way in. He left the door hanging ajar and thundered back into the kitchen. He flung Cas’ ill-begotten pastry into the trash and began assaulting a new lump of dough with his rolling pin. Behind him in their playpen, two of his pups began to wail, and Tony disappeared into the pantry.

Dean set the rolling pin to the side and laid the crust gently into its glass pie pan, his hands working on autopilot. He pricked a few holes in the bottom and edged it along the circumference with his fingertips. He repeated everything with a second pie pan, working swiftly with expert movements. He slid the crusts into the oven, checked the oven temp, wiped his hands on a dishcloth before flinging it onto his shoulder, and squatting in front of the playpen.

“What’s got your diapers in a wad?” he asked soothingly, letting Idgie suck his pinkie into her mouth. Jimmy crawled up to the side of the pen and pulled himself to standing with his fingers entangled in the mesh, his face bright red and his nose running. Dean sighed heavily. He closed his eyes, running his fingers through Jimmy’s fine hair. He brought himself mindfully back from an angry pinnacle. He lifted Jimmy one-handed, a practiced technique that took a degree of care and grace, and he settled his son on his hip, still down on the balls of his feet where he was eyeball to eyeball with all of them.

He sang a soft and playful song while Emma teethed on his finger and Jimmy wiped snot on his shirt. When the timer buzzed, Dean was far calmer.

“I can’t work with you two on my hips, guys. If we want pie, we’re going to have to be patient. Daddy’s got you, but hold on for me for just another minute. It’ll be worth it. Trust me.”

Dean stood back up to the dismay of his children, wiped Jimmy’s nose with his cloth, and set him back in the playpen on his bottom. He rinsed the pup-spit off his finger, collected the warm pan of apple-cinnamon goodness from the stovetop, and portioned it into the partially-baked crusts. He ignored the wailing from behind him as he carefully settled his intricately-woven latticed top crusts onto the pies. He garnished one with two piecrust apple leaves and the other with holly-shaped leaves before putting them into the oven. He set a timer on his phone, listening through his Mating-bonds to see if he could tell what Cas was doing to Michael. Funny that Cas assumed he was too upset to deal with Michael, so instead sent him back to juggling pups. At least Michael was an adult. He could deal if Dean lost it a little. The same couldn’t be said for the babies. And if Dean really was as out of control as Cas suspected, wouldn’t he want Dean nowhere near their offspring?

Dean huffed a disbelieving snort. Cas knew Dean wasn’t losing his shit. He just wanted to ease Michael’s anxiety. He wanted to appear to be the great Alpha, always in full control. Dean swallowed around a lump of bitterness in his throat.

He swooped down on the little ones and scooped both of the loudmouths up at once, showering them each with kisses. “See? I’ve gotcha, you little monsters. And now you get pie _and_ Daddy cuddles. Who wants a puppy pile, huh? Puppy pile?”

Holding onto Emma while dragging the wheeled playpen with one hand and hoisting Jimmy up to his shoulder with the other was cumbersome. Tony emerged from the pantry and silently took over rolling the playpen into the Parlor. Emma was still sniffly, but Jimmy quieted now that he had what he wanted. In the playpen, Kat pulled up and reached up with both hands to be rescued from her prison, balancing by leaning her tummy into the soft mesh side. Alex was too busy chewing on blocks to notice a rescue was being mounted. Dean spread a clean blanket on the floor, settled the two he’d already sprung, and then hoisted the other two out as well. He sat leaning against the sofa with his legs spread wide, and he set to playing with his pups, each of them showing him their toys in turn.

Soon he was entranced, laying on his side by the sofa and practically covered in baby drool. Emma in particular loved to bestow kisses, despite not really understanding the mechanics of a slobberless kiss. He stopped fixating on Michael’s state of mind after he felt his mate burst into infernos of shame and then crumble back down into penitence. Cas hadn’t touched him physically. But it had to have been one of those Alpha lectures that leaves you scorched from the inside out.

Cas emerged again an unquantified time later. It couldn’t have been all that long as Dean’s timer was still ticking down. The Alpha sat down on the floor opposite Dean, caging in the squirmy pups and accepting a soft-sided book Kat gifted him. He sent Dean a bracing look before animating his face and beginning to read the picture book to his daughter. The other three immediately dropped their toys and scuttled across to join the story.

“Traitors,” Dean mumbled at them. He waited until Cas reached the last page and surrendered the book to Alex before speaking.

“Where’s Michael?”

“I sent him to his room for the evening. You can go up and deal with him whenever you’re ready. Whether he gets dinner or not is your decision.” Cas played gently with the pups as he talked. He had an ease with them that Dean found endearing. Alex crawled up into Castiel’s lap and pretended to read the book out loud to his father, babbling nonsense syllables in recognizable language inflections. Cas helped him turn the pages and made noises of agreement here and there. Dean watched them, feeling his resentment dissipate.

“Cas, can I ask you a favor?”

“Of course, Dean. Anything. Kathleen, you mustn’t hit your sister. Here. Try this one instead.” Cas handed his daughter a soft toy in place of the stiff one she had been wielding. Kat took it and crammed it into her mouth.

“Man, I feel a fall coming. I’m itching to throw shit and break something. The image of apple pie sliding down the kitchen wall won’t leave my mind. Do you think you can head that off for me so we get to eat the pie instead of mopping it up? I’d hate to ruin Jess’ birthday dinner. I need something powerful and painful.”

“Dean. That is spectacular progress. Of course I can. It would be my honor. I’m so proud of you.” There was warmth and wonder in Castiel’s voice, and it made Dean blush slightly.

“I was going to ask Michael tonight after dinner,” he admitted. “He told me ages ago that all I had to do was ask, and I finally felt ready to try him out to see if he could pull the intensity I’m craving without being provoked into it. You understand, don’t you, Cas? Why I would go to him instead of you?”

“It’s fine, Dean. He’s your mate. In fact, if you’d rather, I can provide you a stopgap to tide you over until he’s out of the doghouse. You can still ask for the full response from Michael.”

“No, if it’s all the same, after what he’s got on his plate today, I’d rather you do it. I’m not in any condition to take my chances that it isn’t enough. I feel it coming, babe, and it feels big. I feel stretched thin and burned out. I almost mouthed off at you back there just to piss you off. I know that’s not what Michael needed. It would’ve been for me, not him. It took me a little thinking to trace back why I got so mad at you sending me packing. You knew I was about to pull the same play Michael’s in the roaster for, didn’t you? Somehow you knew I was poised to take something that was about Michael and turn it all onto me.”

Cas nodded solemnly. “Yes, I knew. You’ve been building to it for days.”

Dean gritted his teeth and nodded back. “I need a re-set. Like, a total system reboot. I haven’t slept more than three hours straight in almost a month what with cycles, and the pups’ colds, and the budget deadlines. And now Michael. Jesus, what are we gonna do, man? How do we get through to him?” Dean leaned back into the couch until he wasn’t looking at Cas anymore, and he didn’t see Alex clambering across to throw himself on his daddy’s stomach. Dean let out a surprised ‘whoof’ and sat straight up.

“Ace, buddy! Warn a guy!” Dean pulled him up and kissed his soft throat, letting the pup seek out his dad’s scent glands and rub his nose and chin behind Dean’s ear.

“A roleplay, then,” Cas concluded. “Would you like to choreograph it or ad lib? I’m fine with either option.”

Dean closed his eyes on his exhale. The feeling of being taken in hand sent tingles down his spine and made him shiver. They weren’t even there yet, but his Sir had agreed, and that was enough to settle Dean.

“Maybe you could outline some if/then options for us and keep them to yourself so I can roll with it?” Dean made it a question. “You’re okay if I lash out? I…Cas, I really need to let go and then feel you pull me up short and tight.”

“I’ll take care of everything, my love. And for tonight, since he’s grounded, Michael forfeits the right to grant or deny us this round.”

“Thanks, Cas. I knew you’d get it.”

“I do, Dean. I get it. I’m really very proud of you. Go on and help Tony finish supper. I’ve got the munchkins. Emma Jo, that does not belong in your mouth.”

***************

“You stood still and let her bind you,” Dean commented dryly, giving no hint of what he thought about it.

“She’s my superior, alpha. It was either capitulate to the punishment or lose my position in the program.”

Dean shook his head as if Michael was missing the point. “_You,_” he said with emphasis, lowering his chin. “Allowed a beta-Neutral, who you’ve already accosted once, to put a rope corset on you, and you wore it to class.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“How did you and Jody convince your wolf that you didn’t have a choice? He’s not the most easygoing mutt I’ve met.”

Michael swallowed. “I kenneled my wolf. It wasn’t easy. He was mad.”

“Mad.”

“What do you want me to say, Dean? Yes, mad. But I stashed him, and Jody and I both lived through it.”

“Michael, that’s…damn, boy, that took a hell of a lot of self-control. You get that, right? I wanna make sure we’re on the same page here. That was some next-level Tertiary regulation, and you made it look easy.” Dean was pacing slowly in front of Michael, holding his eye. Michael stood stiffly at the foot of their bed with his feet apart and his hands behind his back wearing a faded pair of flannel pajama pants.

“It wasn’t easy,” Michael objected.

“Did you hiss or snarl at her? Snap? Did you fight her in any way?”

“No, sir.”

Dean stopped and faced Michael. He let Michael think. Dean’s eyes could have drilled granite. Red eyes confronted golden. Michael’s chest heaved. Dean took one step closer and spoke very softly.

“Don’t you ever try to excuse behavior like this again by saying you can’t control yourself. You _can_ control it when you choose to. And, man, if you can’t make that choice when our clients are at stake, you are in the wrong line of work.”

“I’m sorry, alpha. It wasn’t a lack of control. It was a bad decision. I get it now.”

“Oh, is that right? You get it now? We’ve been on this roundabout for months but truss you up like a Sunday chicken and all of a sudden it’s crystal clear? I’ve been way too lenient, Omega. I let you slide on the promises that it wouldn’t keep happening. This time, you’re paying what you owe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here’s the rule, Michael. When you work with Omegas, your wolf stays kenneled one-hundred percent of the time. Don’t even let it out to sniff the wind. It’s not trustworthy enough to be there. It’s a pedophile in the schoolyard. Do I make myself clear? Consider it a restraining order. Cage the fucker or tap out.”

“Yes, alpha.”

“And when you work with alphas, you feed out just enough Tertiary to get their attention and win their respect. There’s a reason you’re not cleared to work solo with alphas yet, Michael. That’s a dance that we expect will take you loads of practice to nail down. Is any of this ringing a bell?”

“Yes, sir. I remember.”

Dean huffed. “Do you?”

“Alpha, please. Let me prove it to you.”

“What do you do when you have a client who reacts to you with sexual arousal?” Dean asked, veering the subject down a different line.

“I disengage. I keep working but without acknowledging the spark. I avoid eye contact. I keep my touch limited to the bare essential. Don’t get flustered. Don’t take it personally. Re-stake my wolf to make sure he’s kenneled securely. Put the client first.”

“All good answers, Michael. Why isn’t that what you do when you’re presented with that scenario? Talk to me. What’s going on in your head?” Dean stepped around behind him and sat on the bed. He didn’t invite Michael to turn.

Michael’s head dipped. “I feel responsible for them, Dean. Their nerves, their worry, their discomfort. I feel the need to ease it all. It always starts innocently. I don’t want to be one of those therapists who puts distance between their own humanity and their client’s, and when people get uptight, I soothe them. It starts there, but it builds. They like my touch and my voice, and as they begin to react to me, I…”

“You preen.”

“Yeah. I suppose that’s the word. It feels good to connect with people. It happens in the background inside my head so that I’m never aware I’ve built a D/s substructure between us until it’s already complete and I’ve got a client desperate to please me.”

“Who’s doing the building, Michael? Is it your wolf or is it you?”

“I’m not sure.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed, weighing. Finally, he accepted that Michael wasn’t certain. “Thank you for being honest. If it’s your wolf, then kenneling it will solve this. If it’s your front-brain, we’ve got a problem that I don’t know how to solve except with classic conditioning, and I know how much you enjoy that.”

“What do we do?” Michael asked with a shaky voice.

Dean gave it a moment. He scratched his chin and then rolled his open palm over the back of his neck. He stood back up. “You’ve earned a right thrashing, man, and we’re not leaving this room until you’ve taken what I owe you. After that, I’m going to propose to Jody that your clinicals be monitored by a pair of mentors – one focused on the client’s welfare and your professional performance, the other just to watch over your wolf.”

Dean could feel it too when Michael’s mouth went dry. “Only Winchester Pack alphas can even see my wolf,” Michael pointed out. “No one else has a Claim.”

“That’s true. We’re going to need to fix that.”

“Who?” Michael asked.

“Joshua or Benny would be my ‘druthers,” Dean told him.

“Benny’s too busy,” Michael said stoically.

“Probably.”

Michael stared at the carpeting in front of him, silent and pouting.

“Look, Michael, I don’t like it either. I don’t want anyone else to hold a Claim over you, but we have to do something. I’ve never known Jody to cut someone this many breaks. She’s done, kiddo. Next move is yours. If you really mean you’re serious and staying in the program means that much to you, you gotta prove it. Once you figure out how to cut this pattern off at the knees and give the clients the service they deserve, we’ll ease off on the supervision. But you asked for this. Don’t go balking now that you got it.”

“I didn’t know it would be this hard, Dean.”

“Everything worth achieving is hard, Michael. Nut up,” the alpha snapped harshly.

“Can I still come with you to Providence?”

“Go fill a bowl with water and grab a wash cloth. Leave your pants in the bathroom.”

“Please, alpha. Don’t bench me. It’s my first convention.”

“No, it’s not. Don’t be dramatic. I’m not pulling you from Rhode Island, but if you aren’t back here with the water by the time I get my paddle outta the closet, you can spend the whole con in your hotel room.”

Michael squeaked and darted away. Dean pressed his lips together and collected his paddle from its nail in the closet. He blew dust off the outward curves. It had been a while since he’d held this type of wood in his right hand. Michael usually took a strapping over a paddle. This time felt like a different flavor though, and Dean went with what his instinct led him to do.

Michael was just coming back to the bed with a bowl of water in one hand and a dry cloth in the other. He held them both out to Dean. The alpha set the paddle on the bed and took the small white cloth from his mate. Carefully, he wet it, making sure not to spill on the floor.

“Lay out on the bed for me, Omega.” Dean took the bowl and set it on the floor around the corner from the end where Michael braced his feet. He spread the wet cloth over Michael’s backside. Water ran in rivulets down Michael’s flesh, seeking the lowest pathway along each curve and crevice to disappear into the comforter. Dean stooped and wet his right hand in the water as well. Michael bit his lower lip and then hid his face in his arms.

“Count every swat, Omega. You lose count, we start over.”

“Yessir.”

Dean removed the cloth, laid it flat on the paddle for safekeeping and easy access, and then he set to turning his mate’s wet ass bright red with his hand. Michael counted loudly, keeping his volume incontrovertibly clear. He began to pant rapidly, but his counting never hesitated, sometimes meeting Dean’s strike right in time. Dean re-wet his hand often, and the sting reverberated in his head, bouncing in from his mate’s agony to build inside Dean’s mind, a feedback loop of power and pain.

At eighty, Dean switched out for the paddle. It had absorbed enough moisture from the cloth that keeping it wet was easy. Dean still made Michael swipe it with the cloth before every stroke, slowing the process and keeping his backside wet. It was an exercise in submission that Dean could feel Michael hated to his bones. He kept count though, and he didn’t budge.

“Get up on your knees on the bed now, Omega,” Dean told him after a slow fifty. “Knees wide. Pull your cheeks apart. We’re aiming for the tender spots way up close.”

“No, alpha! No! I’ll be good!”

“Don’t make me add a strap, Omega. I don’t like this one bit, but you earned it, and I’m going to do right by you if it kills me.”

Michael whimpered as he got positioned. Dean rearranged him to keep his testicles out of the line of fire, but when he popped the paddle hard right at the intersection of ass, thighs, and sit spots, Michael yowled as if his jewels were being crushed in a can opener.

“You forgot to count. Five more, Omega. Hold still.”

“OW, ALPHA! PLEASE!”

Dean snapped his wrist and popped it down again. “Count!”

“TWO!”

“Say ‘one’, Michael. We started over.”

“_ONE!_”

Once prompted, Michael didn’t forget again, but when Dean released him from his position, he rolled to his side moaning with his hands reaching back between his legs rubbing at his sore flesh in an undignified frenzy.

“Spare me,” Dean told him affectionately. “You’ve had worse. C’mere.”

“My channel is swelling closed,” Michael whined.

“Mm. Kinky.”

Michael rolled into Dean’s chest when Dean flopped down on the bed and reached for him. “Don’t make fun of me, alpha.”

“Nah. Shh. I got you. Give me your hands. Stop rubbing it.”

“Mmmnngh!”

Dean kissed his mate’s brow. “Michael, I forgive you. You know that, right?”

“I’m so embarrassed though, Dean. How will I show my face to Jody again?”

“She doesn’t hold grudges, babe. She’ll be watching you for signs you’ve crossed this barricade though. Forgiving isn’t forgetting. You need to keep your eyes focused on the goal in front of you. Don’t lose focus. Don’t try to do it without guidance.”

“Can I do this, Dean? Can I do it at all?”

“Michael, man, we’ve trained a lot of people. You’re by no means a hopeless case. The only thing standing in your way is you. Here, try this. Think of _’Top Gun’_. You’re Maverick. Tell me what that means.”

“Uh,” Michael hesitated. “I’m the hot-head?”

“Yup. Take it all the way through the plot. Where are you right now in terms of the movie?”

“Is Goose dead yet?”

“No, Michael. Goose is still alive.”

“So, I just got reamed out in the C.O.’s office.”

“Did you? What comes next?”

“I get butt-hurt and go on a tirade, and it ends badly.”

“Badly for who?” Dean pressed.

“For people who depend on me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was stuck in my own head, caught up in who’s right or wrong, in my own self-image, and I wouldn’t listen to people who had my best interest at heart and a lifetime more experience than me.”

“Damn, Michael, you’re good at this. So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to pay attention to my instructors, kennel my wolf, and buzz the tower.”

Dean laughed and kissed the side of Michael’s head. “And study for your psych test,” he added pointedly. “You hungry?”

“Famished.”

“I’ll bring you a tray.”

“Can we talk through the Psych chapter? I’m still confused between ‘Fall’ and ‘Drop’. The symptoms are almost identical, but the treatments are opposite.” Michael rolled off his mate as Dean struggled to his feet.

“You’re making it harder than it needs to be, man. The difference is the source of the symptoms, and you can tell them apart by what started them each. A drop happens _after_ a Secondary or Tertiary encounter when the participants don’t get enough support from each other to come back to center after a deep dive. A fall is what’s on my horizon right now. It’s what happens when a dude goes too long without a good ass-reddening scene. It builds over time when there’s no encounters to speak of, but the dude really needs one. So, look, I’m gonna bring you a tray. You eat and study, and later, when Cas is through heading off my impending _fall_, I’ll send him in to check on you. Write up any questions that come up while you’re reading.”

“So,” Michael blinked and bit his lip. “You’re scening with Castiel tonight?”

“Yeah. I’m in a bad way, Michael. I need it. And you’re… You know. Bad timing. We’re okay though, you and me.”

“He didn’t ask me.”

“No, and he’s not planning to. You’re grounded tonight.”

“Oh.” Michael huffed humorlessly. “Unintended consequences.”

“You need anything from downstairs?” Dean asked as he approached the door.

“My bag is in the foyer.”

“Okay, I gotcha. Settle in. I expect you to ace this test.”

“Can Pete help me study?”

“Cas put her to bed an hour ago. She’s been pulling double-duty all week with the pups and getting ready to celebrate Jess’ birthday and Christmas too. She’s freaking out about the Grammy nomination. She needs a break. Cain said her work’s suffering. Besides, it’ll do you some good to spend a few hours alone with your throbbing butt and your textbooks.”

Michael grumbled, and Dean grinned. Dean felt the grin slip as he left the room and closed the door though. His whole body sagged with fatigue, and he felt as if he was being held up by clothespins. He rubbed his face with a weary hand and snagged Michael’s bag on the way to the kitchen. April wasn’t the only one pulling extra duties lately. The house sparkled with holiday cheer, a new tradition Dean insisted they institute while the pups were still young. It had taken him over a month to finish tinkering with all the decorations. Every surface that could hold a twinkle light of sprig of evergreen was adorned.

But Friday night’s celebratory dinner had been flat without Michael in a way that holly and pie couldn’t fix.

Tony had a tray already loaded, the food still hot and fragrant. A single piece of pie sat alone on the counter as if Tony hadn’t been certain if grounded Omegas would be afforded dessert or not.

Dean added the pie to the tray and headed back upstairs. He delivered it without fanfare, leaving Michael a soft kiss on the side of his mouth and closing the door on his way out. He nudged the door to the nursery open. Cas had Alex in his arms in the rocker and Jimmy blinking heavily in the swing. A quick look in the crib told him that Emma and Kat were already dead to the world, each laid out at opposite ends of the mattress. Kat was a gymnast in her sleep, and she had a habit of kicking her siblings awake.

Dean eased Jimmy out of the swing and lifted him to his shoulder briefly, jouncing him gently. “When I lay you down, are you gonna be a man about it?” he asked the pup rhetorically. Jimmy nuzzled Dean’s throat sleepily.

“Atta boy. Here we go. Shh. Daddy needs a good strapping tonight, Jimster. How ‘bout you get your Z’s and let Papa take care of Daddy uninterrupted? There’s a big boy.” Dean laid him down at the end of Alex’s bed. The plea was academic as Michael had the baby monitor while Dean and Cas engaged themselves downstairs.

They had been rotating the triplets to see which combinations worked best in what sleeping configuration. So far, the most reliable arrangement was for the triplets to sleep together in one crib and Alex to sleep alone. But they would soon outgrow their crib if they continued to share it three abreast. Putting the boys in one crib and the girls in the other also worked most nights. Jimmy was the lightest sleeper, and Alex was a natural cuddler, so they had a synergistic effect on each other.

Emma slept like the dead as long as she didn’t take a foot to the face in the middle of the night, while nothing seemed to make any difference whatsoever to Kat. She slept well or she didn’t according to her own internal machinations.

Jimmy shuffled around tiredly for a moment, rolled onto his belly and pulled his knees up under him so his backside stuck up. Dean patted it a couple of times, rubbed circles on his back, and then pulled his blanket up to the middle of his back and stepped quietly back. He turned to Cas.

Castiel’s face registered soft admiration. He rocked Alex like a metronome, his eyes fixed on Dean with an expression of having everything he’d ever wanted at his feet. He was contentment encapsulated. Dean quirked a smile at him and nocked his head to the side to indicate he would wait outside. Cas nodded understanding. Looking down at Alex, Cas nodded again to let Dean know it wouldn’t be long.

Cas had done some thinking while he settled the pups for the night. Dean needed to be taken out of his own head for a span by fire and froth. Cas had felt him building up to a blowout and had been looking for safe ways to guide him toward destroying something they could live without. He’d considered and discarded the idea of pre-empting Dean’s barrage with a grownup conversation. That had never worked, and it usually had the opposite effect to what he intended.

He’d learned over the years to let Dean lead the dance toward chaos, to light however many matches he needed to and only once all the fuses were going could Cas safely step in and take him over. For Dean to have spoken up the way he did, asking for the brimstone without lighting any bombs, set Cas on alert. Were there fuses sizzling away that he didn’t know about yet? Was it a ruse of some kind?

Was Dean honestly growing right before his eyes?

Cas meant to take him at his word and see him fulfilled as he’d asked to be. Anything less would be a cop out, and Castiel wasn’t prone to copping out. That left Cas wondering how best to go about it. The element of surprise was a useful tool, and one that both partners enjoyed making liberal use of. Dean was infamous for despising surprises but only because it had the effect of setting him back on his heels and sending him defensively into his wolf. In-scene, he thrived on being kept in the dark. So, for tonight, Cas meant to turn the lights off metaphorically and leave him guessing.

He rocked Alex steadily, feeling the pup’s grip on his shirt begin to grow slack.

What had driven Dean’s fall this time? There was usually a trigger that started the ball rolling, and sequential hits sent it cascading ever faster, ever larger until Dean lost control of it entirely, and it bowled him over heels over head. Dean’s falls nearly always involved mental and physical fatigue, and no wonder. With four squalling pups to wrangle – six when Sam and Jess stopped in – everyone was exhausted. They were easy pups as pups go, but there were four of them. Caring for them well enough to keep them healthy was hard enough. Taking time to really connect with them was even harder, and Dean was committed to being more than a changer of diapers. He wanted to know his children and to have them know him.

Cas weighed the amount of intensive quality time Dean was putting in with the pups on top of his performance at work, which, for the last few months had been stellar, and come to the conclusion that Dean was due an intermission into Nowheresville. On top of that, even while perched precariously at the ledge and losing his balance, Dean had still pulled together the grit to dole out appropriate consequences to Michael.

April had the same fall coming. She was pulled ever more tightly between responsibilities, all of which meant a great deal to her, none of which could take second chair to the others. With the shared Grammy nomination now highlighting her name to the general public, barely a day passed without a call or text from New York that sent her whirling into another anxiety attack. Unlike Dean though, April wore out before she fully tumbled, and Cas had tucked her into bed with a soft blanket and a fluffy dog.

Dean never stopped moving before he fell, even if he was burning out from every direction. He would continue to push through until he was so frazzled he broke something irreparably. For Dean, that act of willful destruction was a raised finger to the physical limitations his body and his mind were bound to. It was a shout of rage out into the darkness, knowing full well that the darkness would always win in the end.

_”Rage, rage against the dying of the light!”_ That was Dean.

Dean was what happened when testosterone took over where stamina left off and razing it all to the ground was the only recourse he had left that gave him any sense of self-respect.

Cas smiled into Alex’s baby-scented hair. He loved Dean when he was furious at the world. He loved even more taking Dean by the bridle and letting him rage against the hold, kicking up dust and sweat in a desperate attempt to break free, only to flay him until the whites of his eyes rolled, and he fell still, heaving and panting, head low and withers trembling, to stand shaking in submission before his Alpha.

Castiel found he had a rather ill-timed erection as he hauled himself out of the rocking chair to lay Alex beside his brother. Alex stirred, his nose scenting the change in the air, but Cas placed a palm on the back of his head and soothed him back to sleep.

Dean wasn’t in the hallway when Cas emerged. He felt outward through his link and zeroed in on Dean’s location below his feet. He was in the playroom. He was centering.

Whatever happened tonight, Cas vowed to reward Dean at the end. Dean had already earned it, pass or fail through the scene itself. Of course, he had no intention of leaking that little nugget just yet. Plus, this wasn’t going to be the kind of scene that really had a chance of failure one way or another. Whatever Dean chose to do, Castiel would respond by directing them both toward the pain his Sub needed. From that perspective, a failure on his Sub’s part was a victory. Dean really wasn’t going to have to do anything but hang on tight and scream himself hoarse.

Cas shoved the playroom door hard so that it flew open with a bang, and he caught the startled turn of a surprised head. Dean’s body was neatly arrayed, but he’d been looking at the back wall while he waited, perusing the straps hanging in a line, perhaps?

“Interesting,” Cas commented in a low rumble, strolling in like the king of the world. “I see my pet has forgotten the basics of his very first lesson. However shall I respond?”

“I’m sorry, Sir. You took me by surprise.”

“Did I?”

“Um…yessir.”

“Recite for me, please, Pet. What was your very first lesson?”

Dean swallowed. He tracked his Dom with his eyes as the man strolled casually about, touching nearly everything he passed.

“Obey you unless I need to call a safeword.”

“Hmm. Not the one I’m thinking of. Not untrue, exactly, but let’s argue that an initial recitation of the contract isn’t what I’m searching for. Try again.”

Dean licked his lower lip. His eyes were bright. “You told me to finish my water.”

Cas chuckled darkly. “You have an excellent memory, Pet. Drinking a glass of water is hardly a lesson though, is it? You have one more chance. I encourage you to answer correctly this time if you’re at all interested in continuing this evening.”

Dean’s head followed his Dom’s progress toward the back of the room. He licked his lips, clearly deciding to take the warning seriously. His eyes lost the tease that had them alight. “I’m to…um…kneel naked on my starting position in my starting pose, put my eyes on the door, and wait for you.”

“Very good.”

Cas kept strolling. He reached the back wall where the straps had garnered Dean’s attention, and he carded his fingers through the warm leather. Dean didn’t strain his neck by trying to watch him. He had his head lowered to his left, prepared to pick the Dom back up if he continued on. Cas let the silence lengthen. Eventually, he moved on around, leaving the straps where they were and gliding on past the luxurious couch that April had draped in faux monkey fur. Dean’s eyes flicked up to him, and Cas stopped at the point where Dean could hold his eyes but doing so was an uncomfortable angle for his head.

“That isn’t what you did though, is it?”

“No, _Sir,_” Dean told him, adding a touch of petulance that dared a reaction. Cas smirked. This was going to be fun.

Dean had been raised by a man who demanded obedience and rationality. Flares of temper, the hot-blooded kind, had been dashed coldly the moment they showed the first sign of bursting from an adolescent too fired up, too impetuous, to control his own rage. John had no patience for that from anyone but himself. Never mind that Dean desperately needed a conduit to feed the rage safely onto bare ground where it wouldn’t scorch anything precious.

What Castiel gave him was a conduit. He let Dean rage until the fire burned itself into a glorious conflagration, he fed it, tended it, raised it up into epic levels of power and heat, and then he whoofed it out like a breath on a birthday candle, leaving Dean utterly spent and shaking.

But first, he had to ignite Dean’s pilot-light.

“Where were your eyes when I arrived, Pet?”

“I was looking at the showerhead in the back, Sir. I think it needs replacing.” Dean smirked back.

“Well, by all means, if you’d rather be doing a home improvement project, I’ll leave you to it. You don’t need me for plumbing jobs. Have a good evening, Dean.”

“What?”

Cas strolled a little faster, still barely acknowledging the Sub in the middle of the room. “I misunderstood,” he said coldly. “I thought you were invested in performing duties as I see fit this evening, but I see you’re more interested in the plumbing. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Now wait just a goddamned minute!” Dean sprang off his square and planted himself before his Dominant. “You’re leaving? We didn’t do anything!”

“I ask very little of you, Dean.” Castiel buried his excitement and let nothing but cold steel touch his eyes. “I ask that you remember one simple set of instructions at the outset, and that you follow instructions as they are fed to you line by line after that. I go to a great deal of effort to plan and to implement scenes for you that you don’t need to worry your pretty head about whatsoever so that you can glide through them while I do all the work. The least you can do for me is to remember your goddamned starting pose. Is that too much to ask?”

“While you do all the work?! Are you insane?”

“_KNEES! NOW!_”

shit

Dean dropped, covering his head with his arms.

“Am I insane?” Cas repeated lightly. “Was that the question? Why don’t we find out? Let’s try this again. Dean, Pet, go get in your fucking starting position and try to get it right this time.”

Dean’s face contorted in rage. He snarled, pulling his lip upward as his nostrils flared. He lumbered angrily to his feet, slapping Castiel’s hand away when the Alpha offered it. Dean stood toe to toe with the man, eyes shifting to red, and self-control on a hair trigger.

Castiel didn’t balk. He breathed mindfully, controlling his wolf, his eyes, even his heartbeat through practiced techniques and years and years of repetition. Dean was allowed to lose it. Castiel couldn’t.

“Your starting square, Pet. I’m waiting.”

“Fuck this,” Dean spat. He turned on his heel and snatched two hangers off the back rack that had his clothes dangling from them.

“I’m in no mood for impertinence, Dean.” He actually was. He really, really was. Castiel’s wolf was snarling like a caged tiger. “You asked for a scene. Drop the clothes and place yourself correctly before I decide to do it for you.”

“Fuck this, and fuck you, Cas! Go kneel on the goddamn square yourself if you’re so keen!”

Dean knew it was coming, and yet once it was over, he still couldn’t have said what happened exactly. One moment he was storming toward the door, nearly there, and the next he was flat on his back with Castiel’s foot planted in his groin and pain blossoming from more than three places.

Cas tsked at him calmly from six feet up. “I believe we’ll be using cuffs tonight, Pet. I’d hate to have to chase you down. The ruckus could wake the household.” The Dom affected a fake cheeriness. “Sound good? Yes, it does.” He pulled a groaning Dean to his feet, dusted him off a little, and then bent him double with a hand at the back of his neck. Looking up into Castiel’s crazy expression, Dean’s jaw dropped.

“Oh, Pet,” the man sang. “This is going to be so. much. fun.”

Dean closed his eyes and grimaced against the pain.

So much pain.

***************

“You still amaze me, Dean. It’s been years, and I’m still in awe of your stamina and your pain threshold. How’re the wrists?” Cas kneed back up onto the mattress with an icepack in his hand. “Show me.”

“ ‘M good, Alpha. Can we sleep now?”

“Yes, love, in a minute. Here, drink the rest of your juice.” Cas handed the glass to Dean but had to help him stabilize it.

Dean was embarrassed at his jittery hands. “Damn, it’s been a while since I had the shakes this bad after a scene. Cas, leave it. My wrists are fine. It’s surface bruising.”

“You’re experiencing an adrenalin load, Dean. Can you try to breathe back down with me? Let’s slow you down, alpha.” Cas set the juice glass on the sideboard and pressed the ice pack into the outside of Dean’s right wrist. He held Dean’s eyes and they breathed slowly together, intimately. He straddled Dean’s thighs and moved the ice to the other wrist, maintaining the pace of his breath and feeling when the tremors eased.

Dean blinked sleepily.

“I’m so proud of you, my love.”

“Yeah, you said that already,” Dean teased.

“It bears repeating,” Cas defended with no embarrassment.

“Come ‘ere,” Dean suggested as he wriggled to get to a flat supine position. Cas stretched out beside him. Dean met him with a warm, intense kiss, feeding Cas his gratitude and affection, saying all the things he didn’t know how to say in words. Cas answered him back in kind, rolling up on top of him and inundating him with hot, wet kisses, flooding him with adoration.

Dean whimpered.

The pressure made his ass throb. He pulled his knees up, spreading Castiel’s legs wide, and he ran a hand down to massage the sore flesh.

“Mm-mm,” Cas corrected, catching him by the wrist and easing it clear. He didn’t stop kissing.

Dean whimpered again and then groaned into Castiel’s mouth. Eventually, they fell into near stillness, breathing shared air more than kissing, reveling in the closeness and so close to falling asleep that their bodies both fell slack.

“You wanna stay down here, Alpha?” Dean mumbled, half hoping he wouldn’t need to get up, half understanding that they needed at the very least to go fetch the baby monitor from Michael’s room. Only, his body felt like his muscles were no longer strung to his bones. If he tried to stand, he felt like he’d be a sloshing pile of goop dragging at the bare skeleton that attempted to stand to full height by itself.

“I wish I’d installed an elevator,” Cas mumbled back.

“Yeah.”

“Come on, Dean. Put that world-renowned stamina to one more test. Let’s get you upstairs. I promise to let you sleep uninterrupted all night.”

“Noooo,” Dean whined. “Wanna stay with you, not Michael.”

Cas smiled and kissed the tip of his nose. “I’m flattered, but you need the sleep. That was part of the deal, and you know it.”

“I c’n sleep through pups waking if I know you’re getting’ ‘em. Please, Sir? Lemme stay with you.”

“All right, Dean. But we’re sleeping up in our bed, and that means stairs for both of us. Bring the icepack.”

Cas rolled off of him, gaining his feet a little clumsily, and Dean followed with a lot more effort.

“Crimeny,” Dean grumbled, clutching at the back of his thigh. “What’d you hit me with anyway?”

Cas chuckled. “I’ll show you tomorrow. I got a new toy.”

“S’not a toy, man. That’s a medieval torture device.”

“That’s true,” Cas told him, holding the door and helping Dean stumble through it. “Matter of semantics, I suppose. Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that a Grammy nomination that slid by with barely a mention? Why, yes. Yes, it was. Nicholas is nominated again for Best Musical Theater Album, and since our Ozzie is a co-composer, she's up to share it if it wins. Tony nominations don't happen until April, so we won't know what's going to happen there for a bit. April's big show anthem didn't win a nomination for the Grammy's, but there's still hope. It's eligible for a Tony.
> 
> Y'all, I can't tell you how much fun putting together the table of impact implements and classifications has been, although I have to confess, Melodina did most of the work.


	5. Monday, December 17, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monday after that awful Friday when Michael came home in ropes... It's time for Dean to have his say to Jody about tying up other peoples' mates.
> 
> Cas sits in on Dean's session with Tessa because they've discovered something important. Talking it through in the counselor's office has more than one benefit.
> 
> April is at the end of her strength as her candle burns from both ends and starts singeing her fingers in the middle.
> 
> And Alex is ready to try out his new words. Three guesses what he says first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had jury duty this week, and to celebrate I jumped in whole hog and took the whole work set off. It was a win in every way: I didn't get selected, but I showed which re-sets my clock another three years, and I had so much free time I wrote and wrote and wrote.
> 
> Thanks to Jennyfly for the collage. Thanks to Andi4 for the peptalk.
> 
> I hope you enjoy:

Dean rounded the corner toward his office with Cas at his shoulder and spotted Jody already waiting for him outside his door. They’d arrived for work before seven-thirty, as usual, but the beta beat them. That was no surprise considering Dean’s commandment to her back on Friday. Castiel greeted Jody with a simple nod and a word. He kissed Dean chastely on his lips and then unlocked his own door across the hall from Dean’s and let himself in without fanfare. The door swung gently closed behind him.

Dean raised his cardboard tray in offer, and Jody took the coffee cup closest to her with a quiet word of thanks. Without a prompt, she also took his briefcase out of his right hand so he could open his office door unencumbered, and he mumbled a thanks back.

Once inside, Jody set his case on his desk and stood waiting while he organized his belongings and got settled. Eventually, there was nothing left to do but look to each other. He’d had the weekend to think about it, and that helped.

“Have a seat,” Dean said simply.

Jody sat.

“Look, I get why you did it,” Dean began. “And I’m not making excuses for Michael, but that was outta line, even under the circumstances.”

“I disagree,” Jody replied coolly.

“Really? Maybe you can point me to the section in our training guides that recommends bondage as a deterrent for Dominance displays during clinicals.”

Jody sighed. “Dean, he wasn’t listening. We weren’t getting through to him. I needed something startling, something that gave him pause. It was either that or give up on him altogether. I’ve given Michael’s situation a great deal of thought, and there wasn’t a better way. You’re not going to get an apology from me.”

Dean broke in, his temper rising. “You should have called me, beta. I was right down the hall. You weren’t obligated to try to come up with a response on the fly…”

“And how is that fair to the other students, alpha?” she shot back. “None of the others in this session have a mate who can drop everything and come dashing in to their rescue when they fuck up.”

“I’m not rescuing him from his fuck ups, Jody!”

“You’re not letting him stand on his own feet, Dean! If it had been anyone else, you would have ripped into me for calling you down there for something I should be expected to handle on my own. Michael’s not the first Dominant trainee to figure out that it feels good to masturbate himself on a patient’s reaction. Most Doms do it a couple of times until they get smacked down hard and the message sinks in that it’s not harmless. He’s just the most stubborn. Damnit, alpha, he’s uncoachable. If you can’t see how that’s a problem, then we’re stuck.”

“We’re not stuck,” Dean told her bracingly. “He needs a team effort though, not a one-on-one. I see that now. I’m going to bring in a co-mentor to assist you.”

Jody’s jaw dropped. “You’re not serious.”

“He’s unique, beta. We have to stay flexible to his needs and be willing to break our usual rules.”

“Break our usual rules,” she repeated, dumbstruck. “You’re punishing me for Michael’s stubbornness. Dean, I don’t need a partner. I need you to take the handcuffs off me so I can do my job and break some of our usual rules. I can’t believe this. I told you it was a bad idea to train him here. I told you we should send him to Dayton. He’s taking advantage of having his mate onsite to step in for him, and you’re letting him do it.”

“That’s enough,” Dean said fiercely. “You’re forgetting yourself.”

“No, alpha. I’m not the one who’s out of line here. You are. You picked me as his mentor over my objections, and you set me up to play the sacrifice. Dean, I’ve trained hundreds of wolves to do this job. I trained _you._ When it comes to Doms and Subs, I know what I’m doing. I told you and Benny that training Michael here was a shitty idea, and you both overruled me, ignored the warnings. And now it’s all going down exactly as I predicted, and the one who’s getting punished for it is me.”

“I’m not punishing you. I’m correcting an oversight. You’re top of the class for D and S, no question. But he’s training to be a Secondary therapist, not a Tertiary one, and I overlooked how he might need another set of eyes and ears in the room with you both. Maybe it looked to you like whapping his Tertiary nose with a rolled up newspaper was the best plan, but that man has an alpha mate, and you don’t _do_ that to a Mated Omega. You just _don’t._ You put him in _ropes_, Jody! How did you expect me to react?”

“I expected you to back me up, alpha! I expect you to be a professional and put the program ahead of your mate’s hurt feelings or your own alpha possessiveness, and back me up! You would’ve supported me a hundred percent if it had been anyone but Michael, and you know it!”

Dean sat forward. His eyes suffused with crimson streaks. “If you’d done that to someone else’s mate, we would have a lawsuit on our hands.”

“That’s right,” Jody agreed, matching his posture. “And you would’ve told me to let legal handle the whiner. You would have thrown the weight of our entire legal department into supporting my decision to protect the client and chastise the wayward trainee. And you would have issued a personal statement explaining how the ACRI stands in full support of the actions taken. And I’ll tell you something else, alpha; something you don’t want to hear. That Omega wouldn’t need to snack on clients every day if he had enough to eat at home. If he comes to work hungry, that’s on you, Dean. Don’t blame the trainers.”

Dean’s jaw dropped in shock.

Jody collected her coffee and stood up. “You think about that,” she demanded. “Let me know what you decide. Michael’s on his last chance. I have no choice but to write this one up as a formal reprimand. It’ll be on your desk before lunch, and it’ll need your signature. You have some decisions to make, Dean. If you still want me leading his training, then you let me do it my way. No co-mentor. No rescues. And you send him to me every afternoon with his belly full. If that’s not going to happen, I need you to tell me today so we can get him a new mentor. And if you’re having a hard time digesting what you need to do here in respect to this particular trainee, I suggest you ask yourself why. The whole scenario is a disaster waiting to happen, alpha. The only way it might work out is if you can separate being his mate from being his Director of Training. You don’t do him any favors when you make special routes for him to wiggle through, cause he’ll do it, Dean. He’ll take _every_ loophole you leave open to him.”

Dean sat speechless, blinking his eyes back to green. Jody blinked a couple of times herself, coming back down from her stern lecture high.

She licked her lips uncomfortably. “Let me know,” she finished with, and she left Dean to his thoughts.

***************

Tessa’s smile was warm and welcoming as she held the door to her office open and ushered both men in. Castiel had always found her to be an understanding ear and a taker of no bullshit in equal measures. What she’d done for Dean over the last year put her in the miracle-worker column to Cas. He took a spot on one side of the couch, leaving Dean room to settle beside him. Cas wasn’t nearly as familiar with this room as Dean was, but he’d been here several times over the months prior, and he’d always felt their joint sessions gave him valuable insight into how he and Dean functioned together as a couple – sometimes in concert with each other and sometimes painfully out of step.

Tessa had both his trust and his gratitude, so when she invited him to join Dean at his weekly appointment, Castiel accepted with no hesitation.

“Thank you for coming today, Alpha.” Tessa took her usual squashy armchair. It appeared molded to her form from years of single occupancy, and it looked exceedingly comfortable. “We’ve had what Dean believes is a real breakthrough, and he asked if he could explain it to you here, where he’s got extra support to withstand what we’ve come to expect will be a battering from his deeper designations. Talking about some of these issues has been a challenge for him. Talking at all is sometimes a challenge when his lower brats take hold of his tongue.” She shot Dean an affectionate and bracing look, and the man ducked his head.

Cas could feel shame eking from Dean’s side of their bonds.

Cas frowned slightly. “Dean? Whatever you want to talk about, I’m listening.”

“Yeah,” Dean said with a hand across his mouth. “Yeah,” he repeated, still not looking up.

Tessa leaned forward and put a hand on his knee. “Take your time, alpha.”

He huffed through his nose, a sound of frustration and self-condemnation, but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t look up. The trickle of shame turned into a deluge, and Cas could feel Dean slipping away in his head.

“How about if I begin?” Tessa asked him. “I can get the ball rolling and then I’ll let you explain in full when you’re ready.”

Dean nodded, his gaze glued to his lap.

Castiel wrapped an arm around his back and soothed him with simple strokes up and down his ribs. He looked to Tessa in consternation. “What’s this about? What’s got him so tongue-tied?”

“We’ve been taking some deep dives these past several months, Castiel; deep into his various designations. He’s got them tangled together, like most of us do, but in order to help him to suss out the source of his self-esteem challenges, we had to pry them all apart. That’s a painstaking and uncomfortable process for most people, and Dean is no different. It hasn’t been enjoyable for him. What we found is that when his deepest designation feels exposed, it takes him down with it to a place where he loses verbal capacity. He regresses for a time to a pre-verbal mindset.”

“Yes,” Cas nodded, his hand and his eyes still on his husband. “He does that when I touch a certain tone in our scening as well. He always seems to find it cathartic.”

“He does. And often, it is. I encourage the two of you to continue to seek this mindset when you play. Stroking his inner toddler is a critical part of keeping him emotionally healthy. I’m sure you don’t need to be reminded that his younger mindsets are not endangered by his adult sexuality. He’s an adult, not a child, and it’s perfectly healthy to let him regress while engaged in sexual contact.”

Cas nodded. He didn’t need Tessa’s confirmation about that. There was no universe yet created where Cas would neglect Dean’s inner brats during playtime. In fact, it would never be possible. Dean’s brats made sure of that. He continued to frown as he stroked Dean’s back. “So this new discovery he’s made, it touches on…which designation, exactly?”

Tessa took a deep breath. She spoke to Cas, letting Dean seek his voice on his own. “It touches on two of them, actually. What we’ve culled out is an interaction between his Tertiary and his juvenile Primary, both aspects where Dean is submissive, both of his brats, so to speak. It’s a bit of a jumble. The Lupine Tertiary designation speaks mostly in emotions, colors, and coarse images. Those wolves who are capable of hearing speech from their Tertiaries are usually translating feelings into words up in their forebrains. Tertiary designations aren’t great speakers. Sometimes, what they mean to express is misinterpreted by either of our other two designations.”

“I’m following you,” Castiel told her. “What does that mean for Dean?”

Tessa pursed her lips and looked back to Dean. He was shaking his head slowly. He’d closed his eyes. He’d begun a slow rocking in place. She looked hesitant to continue now that it was becoming clear that Dean wasn’t going to win back to the surface on his own. Cas felt a strong sense of gratitude for the counselor. He turned in his spot to face Dean.

“Dean Michael,” he began in a firm tone. “I’m going to give you two options. Whichever you choose is fine. There’s no pressure. You’re okay, love. Stop struggling for me for a moment and listen.” Cas weighted his voice to authoritative, and Dean took a deep breath and fell still. “Good boy. There’s my Pet. Listen to me. I’m here today because I need to hear something important. I know you trust Tessa, and so do I. If you would rather, she and I can talk it through by ourselves. I’m not sending you away, but if you can’t talk to us right now, then you can sit next to me and listen. That’s option one. Option two is to let me pull you back up out of the deep water and set you on your feet again so you can tell me yourself. You understand your choices?”

Dean nodded, looking miserable hunched tightly over his own lap.

“Would you rather Tessa and I talk about your discovery without your input? It’s okay if you can’t find your voice right now, Dean. You can trust both of us to watch out for you. You can trust us. I know your voice is important and you don’t like to be discussed without a say.” Dean didn’t respond to the question. If anything, he seemed more disturbed. The rocking picked up again, and his fingers clenched onto his knees, white and tense.

Cas looked at Tessa, but Tessa was watching Dean silently. Cas licked his lips and continued. “Or would you rather have help coming back to yourself?”

Dean let go of his own knee and touched his knuckle to Castiel’s thigh.

Cas blew out a careful breath. “Good boy. So good for me. So brave. My brave, brave boy. All right. Let go of your knee and stand up, love. I’m going to be quick. I know you don’t like this, and I’m going to make it fast. I’m extremely proud of you. You made a very grown up decision. Come on, Pet. On your feet.”

Tessa sat back a bit as Dean lurched forward and stood up. She didn’t add any commentary. She let Castiel work, observing the two men who had so much trust built between them that there was no hesitation from either of them, even in a moment so vulnerable.

Cas unbuckled Dean’s belt and unbuttoned his slacks, noting that Dean’s eyes held a dark and cloaked kind of pain. He wasn’t looking at Cas, but he stood still, letting his husband loosen his pants. “Over you go, Dean. I’ve got you. Lie down across my lap.”

Dean let Cas position him, utterly passive. His somberness was painful to witness, but it wasn’t new to his husband, and though saddened, Castiel wasn’t alarmed. Once he had the man across his knees, Cas lowered the seat of Dean’s pants until only his backside was bare, showing the yellowing bruises of a several days ago deep in the tissue of his flesh. Dean reached back and took hold of one of Castiel’s hands, and Cas chuckled softly.

“I’m going to need both hands, sweetheart. I love you too. Hang in there for me. This won’t take long. Don’t be afraid. You’re the strongest man I know. You can do this.” Dean let go of Castiel’s hand and tucked his face into his crossed arms. Cas looked up at Tessa, and she gave him a simple nod.

Castiel tucked his left hand tightly under Dean’s torso to hold him in place. He caught Dean’s calves behind his leg to keep him from kicking out, and he slapped Dean’s butt hard with the palm of his right hand. Dean whimpered. Castiel spanked him again, putting power behind his swing, aiming for a deep sting and a growing heat. Pulling Dean out of a dive like this required power and intensity.

And, no, Dean didn’t enjoy it at all.

This was neither play nor punishment, and for Dean, it was miserable. He kicked futilely with both legs, and he squirmed in place, trying to dodge. But Cas had him held tightly, and Dean’s struggles were fruitless. As the spanking continued, Dean’s whimpers grew louder until he was crying out. His voice shifted in tone from passive whines and grunts through the back of his throat to purposeful shouts; still wordless, but distinctly Dean’s voice, engaging his voice box as he shifted and rolled.

Eventually, Dean stopped struggling. Castiel’s palm ached and burned as he spanked. He breathed deeply, using his runner’s pacing – two counts in, three counts out, two counts in, three counts out. As Dean’s body fell lax over his lap, Castiel slowed to a stop and soothed the heated flesh of Dean’s ass with his hand.

“Take your time, love,” he whispered.

Dean shifted upward, still keeping his eyes lowered. He pushed up until he straddled Castiel’s lap with his head tucked into Cas’ throat, wrapping his arms around his Dom and melting into him. Cas chuckled affectionately. “You made a very mature choice, Dean,” he told the man hunkered in his lap. Dean’s pants stretched taut over Castiel’s thighs, but he let Dean have a moment. “It would have been easier to stay under where you were and to let me speak to Tessa alone. I know it’s difficult to talk about things that are so deep inside you. I’m very proud of you for taking control back from your deep designation. That had to be tough. Can you look at me, Dean?”

Cas could feel Dean steeling himself. With a deep, grounding breath, Dean untucked his head and found Castiel’s eyes. Tear tracks smeared both reddened cheeks, and his eyes were tortured. Cas kissed his lips gently, softly. Dean tilted his head and rested his forehead against Castiel’s. He rolled it just a little.

“Can you talk yet? Take your time,” Cas advised.

“’M okay, Alpha,” Dean croaked after a pause. “Feel shaky, but I’m okay.”

“Let’s get you dressed.”

“Mm-mm,” Dean protested, clinging tighter.

Cas chuckled again. “Dean, your alpha won’t have any success holding a front face with you on my lap like this with your backside hanging out. Take a minute if you need to, but don’t settle too long, or all of that will have been for nothing.”

“Urgh!” Dean grumbled unhappily. He shoved backward and stumbled to his feet. Scrubbing the moisture from his cheeks, Dean took a deep breath and fixed his pants. He stood for a moment, facing the door, his arms akimbo in random motion, looking for a way out of the awkwardness. He crossed them over his chest, then he dropped them to his sides, then he smoothed his hands down his thighs, then he snaked them back to rub the sting out of his backside. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and shook his head as if arguing with himself.

Cas and Tessa waited him out patiently.

Finally…

“So, here’s the thing, C.J.,” Dean said gruffly, spinning around, ignoring his own journey in favor of moving decisively forward. “You know that nightmare of mine? With the fire? The one where I always fall into Hell?”

“Yes, I know it,” Cas answered, making no sign that Dean had only just won his voice back. “It’s been tormenting you since you were a teenager.”

“Right. Ever since my mom died. Right? That’s the imagery I see when I’m in the dream. It’s Mom’s workplace up in flames, but in the dream, underneath the floor she was trapped on is…not just the next floor down…it’s full-on Hell, with deep pits and lava flows and tar and stone and boiling lakes. It’s Hell, right?”

“Yes, you’ve described it to me just like that. I’m following. This is about your nightmare?”

Dean licked both lips and glanced at Tessa. “Yeah,” he said stiffly with a hand rubbing his ass. He paced. “The thing is, Tessa helped me trace back through this mess in my head, and we figured out that the dream…Cas, it started with the fire imagery just after my mom died, and that makes sense, right? The picture in my head matches what happened to her. That’s because her death had such a huge emotional impact on me. It scared me to death, thinking of her trapped in the flames like that. It made an enormous impression on all three of my designations, changed my whole perspective about what fear is, what it looks like, feels like. Right?”

“Naturally,” Cas answered.

“But the dream that has me hell bound, it didn’t originate with a nightmare about fire. It’s actually older than my mom’s death. It was there before that, just different. I don’t remember any specifics, but this certainty I’ve always felt that I’m…that…that I’m going to Hell when I die…Cas, that’s coming from these nightmares, and it goes back further than Mom’s death. It’s just that, once I lived through her death and everything that happened to her, my backbrain seized on those images as the perfect device to show me fear. It took a lot of digging to figure that out. It’s coming from the nightmares, and the nightmares are coming from my Tertiary’s fears, not from the Universe or God or some outside source – from inside my own head. Do you see? I misunderstood everything! They’ve been there all this time. And I thought it meant I was damned.”

Castiel looked up at his husband in confusion, his head cocked to try to understand.

“Damnit, I need to slow down. Sorry, man. I lost you.” Dean sat down on the couch and turned to face Cas. He took a slow breath and both of Castiel’s hands. “Man, I’ve had this absolute certainty for as long as I can remember that I can’t be saved, that I’m damned to Hell, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Everything that goes wrong is on me. Everything I touch is destined to rot. And I can’t fix that. The best I can do is try to throw everyone I care about clear so they don’t all get sucked in with me when I go. I never knew where that idea came from. It’s just always been there. It’s been there forever, as far back as my memory goes. And I believed it, C.J., hook, line, and sinker, because it’s so deep inside me, it feels like absolute truth. I have no idea if you can understand what I’m talking about.”

“Yes, Dean. I’m still following. But you’ve uncovered something new about that sense that you’re doomed?”

Dean looked across at Tessa. She smiled encouragingly. “Keep going, Dean. You’re doing fine.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. The thing is…it’s my designations, man. They talk to each other under the radar.”

“Your Secondary and Tertiary? Dean you didn’t have a Secondary until you Presented.”

“No. Not my alpha. He’s not involved in this at all. It’s my wolf and my Primary. You know I Presented pretty much on time, not way early, not especially late. But my wolf… Cas, that fucker has been skulking around in my head since I was a little kid, probably since I was six, maybe five. I dunno. But way earlier than most Tertiaries show up. I’m one of those few whose Submissive wolf emerges as a part of their submissive childhood. And the brat that lives in my front brain, man, he’s even older. Tessa says he’s the reason I go all the way back to being pre-verbal when I float. He stuck at a toddler age, and he never advanced past that point. So, see, I’ve got a toddler brat in my front brain, and a kindergartner in my back brain, and the two of them talk to each other all the time.”

“But you can’t hear what they’re saying directly?” Cas guessed, trying to keep up.

“I hear pieces of it, C.J. That’s just the thing. I hear pieces, but it’s in gobbledygook language. They don’t talk in words. They use imagery.”

“The nightmare.”

“YES!” Dean shot back to his feet and rounded on Cas. “Exactly! That dream…it’s not a foreshadow of where I’m headed when I die, Cas! It’s a foreshadow of where I’m headed next _Tuesday!_ Do you get it? I always dream about _falling_ – falling into fire and pain and punishment and torture. _FALLING!_ Cas, it’s a warning that I’ve got a Submissive fall coming. I don’t know why I never connected the dots before. The dreams come closer together in the weeks before I have one of my massive blowout spirals, and I’ve been dealing with those since I was a pup!”

“You’ve been tracking them?” Cas asked, looking at Tessa for confirmation.

She nodded. “I asked Dean to keep a record of his nightmares, his falls, his drops, critical scenes, significant punishments, anything that breaks the mold of a scheduled daily routine. There’s a notable increase in frequency of his nightmares as he approaches a Submissive fall event.”

Cas blinked and leaned forward. “Is there any chance of diverting the messaging to a less distressful means? Can we tap into Dean’s Tertiary and find a way to glean the same information without need for the nightmares? Can we train it to warn him some other way?”

Tessa chuckled. “This isn’t _’Star Trek’,_ Castiel. I can’t point a tricorder at his head and hit ‘erase’. His dream originates from his Tertiary, but it’s not aimed at warning _us,_ or Dean himself, even. It appears to be attempting to communicate with Dean’s front brain submissive, the youngest version in his psyche. I don’t know of any way of subverting that effort. Tertiary wolves do what they want to do. Yours excluded, of course. Perhaps, Alpha, you might have some success in teaching your training techniques to Dean. I’m hesitant to encourage that though, as your wolf and his are radically different in structure.”

“But we don’t need the warning,” Cas continued. “I can see his falls coming well enough. The dreams are traumatic for Dean. Surely, now that we have insight into their source, we can find a way to soothe the wolf and assure it that it doesn’t need to shout warnings into the darkness. It’s Submissive. Can’t we train it?”

“You’re missing the point, Cas,” Dean objected.

Cas clutched Dean’s hand. “Dean, if your internal designations have that much forewarning about your falls before they happen, maybe we can cut the spiral off at the pass, prevent you from having to go through the fall at all. It’s just a matter of tapping into what your wolf is aware it needs before it becomes a blowout and giving it a response before it turns to provocation.”

“What? No, man, you’re missing the point.”

“Missing the point? Dean, this _is_ the point!” Cas turned to the therapist and tried again. “How do we use this information to keep Dean out of that pit completely? You haven’t seen what he goes through firsthand, but I have, many times. It’s an ordeal, and it’s stressful, and it’s destructive. It’s terrifying for him. How do we shorten his falls or stop them altogether?”

“Cas…I thought you were onboard with handling my falls. You never said…” Dean looked shattered, and Cas pulled up short, switching his intense gaze from the therapist who seemed to be working out how to respond and turning instead to the Submissive beside him who was clearly hurt.

Everything inside Castiel came to a screeching halt.

“You’re not a burden to me, Dean. You could never be. But watching you go through that…It’s traumatizing for all of us, but it’s a devastation for you. If there’s a way to stop you from suffering like you do, you’d better believe I want to find it. This isn’t about searching for a way to protect our belongings. It’s about trying to stop your suffering.”

“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Tessa broke in. “To my knowledge, finding circuitry that helps Dean’s Tertiary communicate with his Primary isn’t going to help you mitigate the intensity of his falls. That’s really not what we’re here to discuss today, Alpha.”

“I…apologize,” Cas said, chastened. Dean had his hands up covering his face again, and Cas felt like a right shit for co-opting his moment. “Dean, I’m sorry. Please continue. I’m listening.”

Dean rubbed his hands over his face and then dropped one. The other stayed across his mouth, hiding him more metaphorically than actually, and he turned his eyes back to his husband. “I, uh…” he stumbled, shifting his hand until his knuckle sat under his nose and he could form words without losing the safety of his hiding place altogether. “I always knew I was damned, C.J. I never even questioned it. But now…” Dean reframed his posture and his approach. “Cas, I misunderstood my dad when he threw blame around after Mom died. I thought he was blaming me, and I thought I deserved it. But he wasn’t, and I didn’t, and letting that guilt go is really fucking hard, but I’m getting there. That wasn’t on me, man. It wasn’t my fault. And now this, this certainty about how I’m damned from the very start, from before I was born maybe, like I was born with a hole in my soul that’s so ragged, it’s not fixable… Now I’m starting to understand that maybe that’s a misunderstanding too.”

“Dean…”

“When I catch messages flitting around in my head that aren’t in a language I understand, I guess I made a buttload of assumptions about what was being said and who it was being said to. And I started making those assumptions when I wasn’t even six years old. I was just a pup, C.J.” Dean paused and regrouped. Cas squeezed his hand, and Dean squeezed back. “Every time we got close to it, Tessa and me, I balled up, lost my voice, went into a deep dive and got stuck there. I couldn’t talk about it. I think my little toddler side wanted to, but he can’t use words, man. All he can do is throw things and have tantrums and shit. But Tessa’s real patient with me. We just kept trying from different angles, and then the lightbulb went off, and I could see everything from way up above it all. It makes so much sense. I feel like a moron that it took me this long to figure it out, what with how much time I spend chewing on it.”

Cas smiled kindly at him.

Dean licked his lips again and dropped his hand. “It’s not about trying to cut off the falls, C.J. I know they’re shitty, and they’re tough on the plaster and all, but I need them. I need to burn it all off every now and then. I’m like a magnet for emotional baggage and crap. I accumulate mine and everyone else’s, and it gets stuck to me. My falls are how I burn off all that shit and get back to being shiny, ol’ me. Just me, without all the crap.”

Tessa broke in gently. “There’s another aspect of Dean’s falls to consider as well.” Both men turned to give her their attention. “He’s unusual in having two separate designations that are both profoundly submissive. Castiel, Dean is _profoundly_ submissive. I know you know that, but my point is, that doesn’t simply mean he needs to be taken in hand frequently or have a barrage of rules to follow. It’s not about an intensity of play. For Dean, it means there’s no escaping his falls. His psyche uses falls to realign his separate designations when they become skewed from each other. Each of his brats has a very different behavior pattern and very different needs. Often, what feeds one brat, starves the other. Without a blazing cathartic fire every now and then, his designations drift further and further apart until there’s no overlap left to them at all.”

Cas frowned. “How is it that his Primary submissive has that much power over him? Lupins aren’t built to be slaves to their Primary. And Dean’s front brain isn’t regressive. He’s a mature adult. Where is this toddler even housed?”

“I can’t answer that, Alpha. I don’t believe anyone can yet. There’s not enough research on the subject. But I can say that the human brain is multifaceted and complex. His front brain as a whole consists of more than his neocortex. It includes aspects from his entire brain as a whole, and it has room for a multitude of personality divisions and traits. Every person we’ve ever been as we’ve aged is still in there somewhere, Alpha. You carry every version of yourself you’ve ever been as well. Some of those versions have more of a voice in our heads than others. Usually, pivotal moments in our development imprint a bit deeper than others. I would guess you both have a loudmouth twelve-year-old shouting his opinions at you now and then. And a five-year-old. And a sixteen-year-old. They’re all still in there, and we can speak with them in a way. Some of them become enmeshed in who we are as adults, and some of them remain separate entities living inside our heads. Dean has a toddler taking up a lot of real estate, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s definitive to his personality. If we were successful in altering that landscape, Dean would cease to be Dean to some degree.”

Castiel thought hard. “You brought me here so that if Dean lost his voice, he had the support he needed to come back to himself. You also knew I would try to turn his revelation into something else…” Cas turned to speak to Dean directly. “…and you wanted Tessa here to help bring me back to the topic.”

“Thanks, man,” Dean said softly. “Thanks for being here. What I needed to say…mostly…is that hard as it’s gonna be, I need to start letting go of the guilt and all that darkness I carry around with me. I need to learn to stop focusing on my fear of the future and pay attention to what my life is right now, today, here with you. I’m gonna need you and Michael to help me. It’s hard to imagine what it might look like without all that shame. I’m buried in it up to my eyeballs. Maybe deeper even. Sometimes it feels like guilt and shame are what holds my body together. And all I can do now is start shoveling and make sure I don’t add any more layers to what’s already there.”

“I’ll help however I can, Dean. I love you so much.” Cas leaned in close and touched his face gently to Dean’s.

“I know, man. But, babe, I need you to let me fall, just the way you’ve always done. I can give you a heads up when the dreams hit me, and maybe we can make some preparations, but don’t expect them to stop, those falls. It may be hell, C.J., but it’s a good kinda heat. It burns away all the crap I don’t need.

Cas huffed a sharp laugh. “Your Tertiary doesn’t seem to think it’s a good heat. Your wolf is prone to exaggeration, it seems.”

“Yeah,” Dean chuckled. “Falls scare the bejeesus outta my wolf. He may be overstating the warning a little. Wish I’d understood that sooner.”

“All we can act on is what we know in the moment,” Castiel assured him with a touch to Dean’s face. “It’s no use regretting what we didn’t know sooner.”

A wave of hormones caught up with Dean and he began to tremble under Castiel’s hands. Cas shushed him gently and wrapped him into a tight embrace. Dean pressed his nose into his husband’s throat, seeking the safety of Alpha scent, and he closed his eyes.

“I left my calendar out on the reception desk,” Tessa told them both. “Lemme go grab it so we can schedule your next session. You did excellent work today, Dean.”

Cas repeated her words into Dean’s ear as the therapist scooted out, leaving the door open behind her. “Excellent work today, alpha,” Cas soothed.

“I’m coming undone,” Dean whispered. “Need you.”

“I’ve got you, Pet. I’ll hold you together.” Cas nosed down Dean’s temple to find his lips and delve in deep, opening his mouth and finding Dean’s tongue with his own. Cas pressed forward until Dean settled onto his back on the couch. He shifted Dean’s outer leg free until he could press in close against his groin and roll his hips. Dean moaned, clutching Cas’ shoulder across his back and pulling.

Cas made short work of both of their belts, both of their buttons, both of their zippers, deepening the kiss all the while, and burying Dean in his want. Cas pulled himself free of his own slacks and then found Dean’s cock too, wrapping one hand around them both, aligning their heads to share the silky first drops and spread it as far down as one hand could hold. Dean whimpered, engaging in the kiss, finding space between their bodies to set his own hand to work and driving his hips up into Castiel’s lead.

Cas moaned loudly.

“…Um…Usually, it works best to save that until you get…home,” Tessa tried futilely from the doorway. “But then, you are Alpha. Could you at least try not to soil the…?”

“Go away,” Castiel told her.

“Right.”

The door closed with a click, and Cas smirked as he drove back into Dean’s lips, his free hand tangling in Dean’s hair and tugging hard. Dean whined and spread his legs wider. Dean’s hand spanned the gap in Castiel’s reach, but he let Cas drive the speed and pressure. Dean craned his head back into the pull of Cas’ grip in his hair and let his Alpha stretch his throat out. Cas switched his kiss from Dean’s mouth to his neck, sucking hard and leaving a string of hickies in his wake.

Dean’s breathing turned raspy and shallow. His hips stuttered in rhythm. He wrapped his legs around Cas’ hips and pressed in, nearly edging out space for their arms and hands.

“Cas…” he moaned in desperation.

“I’ve got you, alpha,” Cas answered gruffly back. “Come for me, Dean. Let’s make a mess of the couch. I want to leave your scent in the fabric with mine.”

The rudeness of the request tipped Dean over the edge, and he spilled into his husband’s hand with a high moan at the thrill. Leaving their scents behind stroked Dean’s brats and his alpha need to mark territory, and he was all over it, shaking in his release and ducking his head back down to find the scent of Alpha at Castiel’s neck. Dean began to pant as the strokes continued, aided by the sticky wetness of his own spend.

Cas’ strokes picked up speed. He let Dean’s cock go, and he and Dean together brought him to completion. Dean’s teeth fixed tightly around the pulse point at Castiel’s throat as his Alpha came, and Cas growled fiercely, breaking free and snapping at the impertinence. Still shooting pulses of come between their bodies, Cas clamped down on Dean’s throat, right on top of his bruises, and bit down.

Dean threw his head back and shrieked, going still but for his rapid panting, sucking in air like it was too thin to catch his breath.

“Brat,” Cas mumbled as he let go with his teeth and kissed the sore place on the side of Dean’s throat.

Dean whuffed a laugh. “My bad,” he effaced, almost like an apology.

“Yes, you are,” Cas agreed.

They panted in silence. Cas wormed his hand free and rested on top of Dean’s body, compressing him from above, adding the sensation of weight to the sense of feeling tethered that Dean was clinging to as he sought his equilibrium.

Dean drove them home still tangled up inside his head, feeling tender rawness from more places than his butt. He ground his jaw and drove mechanically. More and more, he’d begun scheduling his therapy appointments late in the afternoon so he could go straight home afterward…and process.

Cas snaked a hand across the bench seat and touched his thigh with his palm upward. Dean took the offered hand and squeezed.

It was Castiel who broke the silence.

“You had a nightmare last night.”

“Mm-hm,” Dean replied.

“Our scene on Friday night didn’t stop the fall that’s coming, did it? You’ve still got one building.” Cas spoke carefully, thoughtfully.

“I don’t think we can stop them, Alpha,” Dean told him as stiffly. He squinted into the waning afternoon sun. “It’s why I never came out and asked you to fry my ass without provoking you into it. Call it a block if you wanna label it; just like April’s. A roleplay won’t work on my wolf. He has to do something he feels guilty enough about to feel he deserves a flaying. He has to…” His words petered off into silence.

“Dean?”

Dean’s chest heaved, and his face scrunched up in anguish. Castiel turned his body to face his husband’s, pulling his left knee up onto the bench. He squeezed Dean’s fingers. He watched a tear break free of Dean’s eyelid and track down his cheek to highlight the grimace on his lover’s tortured face.

Dean let go of Castiel’s hand to scrub it furiously away. He used a left turn to look away and hide from the intensity of the Alpha’s blue eyes.

When Dean straightened, staring hard into the setting sun, Cas figured it out. He huffed softly and straightened in his seat.

“Surely, you realize, don’t you?” Cas said softly, avoiding Dean’s eye. “That nothing you could ever do will make me love you any less.”

Dean snorted. “It’s not just my wolf who falls, Alpha. This will probably be with me even after I lose my wolf. So, you keep taking that shit from me forever?” There was an acrid bitterness to Dean’s tone that spoke of bottomless self-loathing.

“I will,” Cas said simply. “Forever. And I will feel honored to have that chance. Dean, I can think of no greater blessing than to be trusted enough to be the one who gets to hold you steady while you crumble and then be allowed to help piece you back together again.”

Dean scoffed again. “That’s because you’re a little bit fucked in the head too,” he accused. “You feel guilty for all the ways you failed people you might’ve saved if you’d known how, and you think you deserve to have me fling bullshit at you with no warning.”

Cas chuckled to himself. “Well then, we seem to be a matched set.”

“This isn’t a joke, Castiel! You get what this means? It means that every time I tested your … attachment to me, your commitment or love or whatever I was testing, it wasn’t about testing you at all. It was about throwing a fucking toddler temper tantrum so I could earn enough fire in response to burn clean again. It had nothing to do with you at all! It means that flipping tables and wrecking your car are both the same fucking thing! Getting us thrown out of that movie, dropping my pants and shouting _’Pudding!’_ in front of that cop, all of it. Every stunt I ever pulled that you had to come bail my ass out of. It means that even as a thirty-year-old adult, I’m never going to be free of throwing myself to the ground and acting like an infant! You’re going to have to wipe my snotty nose and smack my childish ass and put me in the corner for a timeout for the rest of our lives because I’m stuck as a two-year-old in my head! And who knows what’s next?”

“What I understand, my love, is that when you feel brave enough, secure enough, safe enough, to allow yourself to show the vulnerability that you need to show in order to re-set your balance – and Dean, that need isn’t exclusive to you, it’s a universally _human_ need – that you have always trusted _me_ with witnessing and responding to you in your most defenseless moments. As I have you. We trust each other, Dean. We always have. Maybe not in everything, but in this most delicate of moments, in the really scary stuff; we trust each other. Don’t you see? You and I are partners in so much more than building a Pack and sharing a household. We chose each other years ago in a way that is as irrefutable as a Mating-bond. Don’t think for a moment that I could ever feel burdened with holding onto you while you rage against your inner workings. No more than you feel burdened with holding still under my furious lash when my wolf is so enraged he needs to behave like a… Like a… All right, I don’t know what he’s like… But it’s wild and angry and out of control far beyond the provocation that led him there.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dean protested as he turned into their drive and slowed to let Security open the gate. “Cas, man, I love your lash and your fiery temper. I eat that shit up. It’s what I live for.”

“Exactly, Dean. We are truly a matched set, you and I. Just as you revel in my temper, I adore your tantrums. You are not a burden to me, love. You are perfect for me. We feed each other. Like you, I have a certain tone in my head that must be struck on occasion in order for me to re-set my feet when I begin to drift off-balance.”

Dean maneuvered the car into its usual space in the garage, set it to park, and cut the engine, but neither man moved to get out.

“It’s a cold and heartless brute of a headspace, Dean. It’s not something I can give to April, not fully. It would devastate her. But I need to unleash it on someone, that contempt. I haven’t done the exploration that you’ve done to try to figure out what it is or where it stems from, but if I did, I suspect I would find it was a vestigial aspect of my upbringing, a lingering unresolved piece of my father that keeps rearing its head, looking for absolution. And like yours, it’s unlikely that I can ever be totally free of the need to express it. So, don’t think that you’re a burden on me when your toddler acts up. Don’t forget, I have a corollary need to respond to a misbehaving brat.”

They sat in the shade of the garage, in the stilted echo of the enclosed car, both looking straight ahead, and they left themselves naked to each other.

Cas went on after a moment. “We are both enriched by our mates. But neither of our mates is sufficient to _this_, much as that truth hurts. Michael cannot see you entirely through your falls because you require an Alpha in the final resolution. And April can take my strap, but she isn’t built to take the psychological whipping that my cold withdrawal of affection would lay upon her. I can’t do that to her. But I can do it to you. And you can offer me a target. We fit, Dean. You and I. I need you to let go of the shame over what you and I do to each other. It’s not broken. It’s not wrong. It’s inevitable and healing and righteous because it fills us both back up to our most authentic levels. Surely you see that you can’t absolve me of shame and still cling to it yourself. If it’s acceptable for me to have a vulnerability that scourges you in your weakest moments, then it’s acceptable for you to throw tantrums that elicit that scourging.”

Dean sucked in a breath. He let it out slowly. Ultimately, he nodded, playing idly with the keys in his hand. “We bought some time,” he said vaguely. “You and that medieval torture device probably postponed my fall by a week or two. I wanna apologize in advance for whatever happens, whatever I break. I know I won’t feel like apologizing once I get sucked under and start throwing plates at the wall.”

Cas smiled softly at him. “No, I don’t suppose you will.” He reached over and stilled Dean’s fingers by wrapping his hand over his husband’s. “But I’ll see you through anyway. That’s a promise.” Cas cracked his door open and began to shift, but Dean took hold of his wrist and stopped him.

“Thanks, C.J.” Dean’s jaw clenched tightly, the only external evidence of his internal struggle, and Cas leaned way over to leave a warm kiss on his lips.

“When I tell you I love you, Dean, I mean every single part of you. No exceptions.” Cas held Dean’s eyes for three or four breaths, their hands still clutching each other, their faces only a couple of inches apart. “Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your journey. I know today was difficult, and I know that having me there made it harder, not easier, to talk about your experiences. But this is a great step forward you’ve taken. It’s monumental. Who knows what you’ll be capable of once you shake off the guilt and the shame you’ve carried on your shoulders your whole life? The idea that you may be ready to walk away from that burden; it’s such a relief. I’m so happy for you, love.”

Dean nodded again and rested his forehead against Castiel’s. “Now I gotta go in there and do it all over again with Michael,” he said wearily.

“When you’re ready, Dean, I’ll stand beside you if you want me to.”

Dean sighed and cracked his own door. “He’s got class until seven. It’ll keep. Let’s go rescue April from the diaper-set and unwind a little.”

“Whatever you need, Dean.”

April, it turned out, wasn’t buried in pups, she was having it out with her manager and her agent in turns, her face red and her posture immovable. When she spotted Castiel coming into the parlor from the kitchen entrance, she burst into tears.

Cain rolled his eyes and began to pack up. Rowena threw her arms up in resignation and turned her back.

“Here, now. What’s all this?” Cas asked as he cradled his weeping mate.

Matt looked up from his laptop. He scratched his cheek. “Cain wants her writing sellable songs,” he explained. “Rowena wants her performing. And April wants a break.” Matt glanced at each party in turn to verify that he’d summed the argument up to their satisfaction.

“If she needs a break,” Castiel said as a tie-breaker. “Then she’s taking a break. You can both explain your objections to me without April. I will listen, talk it over with her in private, and then we will decide what happens in what order for the next month.” He shifted his attention to his mate and softened his tone. “Kitten, go upstairs and take a bath. Try to relax. We’ll see you through, and it will be all right.”

She sniffled sadly but nodded, leaving him with a hug and a shuffling step. Dean touched Castiel’s shoulder as he passed, heading up to find the pups and grant whoever had custody of them a break as well. Cas touched Dean’s fingertips in passing, then he turned to the others.

“Well?” he demanded.

Rowena answered first. “She needs to be _seen and heard,_ Alpha. It does her no gud to put her name to this or that only to have someone else record it. That’s no’ how she’s going to break through to the top echelons. One shared Grammy nomination makes her an oddity, no’ a star.”

“She’s not interested in breaking into stardom yet, beta,” Cain countered testily. It was clearly an old argument. Cas loosened his tie and listened as he poured himself a Scotch. “She wants to solidify her reputation as a composer first, and that takes diligence. It takes _output.”_ Cain turned from Rowena back to Cas. “It takes _constant_ output. She needs to stay prolific, even when she’s tired. I hate that it’s the truth, but it’s the truth, and it’s why so few Omegas make it big in this industry.”

“Matt?” Cas prompted. He turned to face the room but lifted his eyes toward the cornice and crossed his ankles.

The Primate closed his laptop and sat forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. He glanced at the two irritated wolves. “She’s going to burn out soon if she doesn’t take a break. She’s showing signs of losing that fresh edge that makes her work interesting. Some of her latest songs are sellable and might even make the charts if the right voice records them, but they aren’t anywhere close to what she can do. She’s going through the motions, fulfilling someone else’s idea about how she should be spending her time, and all the while, her mind is in the nursery with the kids. Her psyche wants her to focus on her pups, Alpha. Trying to fight that is a losing battle. It’ll rip her in two.”

Cas sighed and carded his fingers through his hair, leaving it awry in every direction. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he agreed. “That’s why I wanted to postpone having children until she had established herself.”

“Little late for packing yur swimmers on ice, Alpha,” Rowena said. Cas shot her a withering look, but she simply shrugged and shot him a look that said, ‘What? It’s true.’

Rowena took the gauntlet up. “All I know is that a new mum is going to be a mum at heart no matter what anyone else wants her to focus on. But every mum needs breaks. _I say,”_ Rowena continued as if she’d hit on the absolute perfect solution. “Forget abou’ the songwriting fer now. It eats too much of her time, and she can’t concentrate tha’ hard right now anyway. Let me book her a few gigs here and there. Jus’ one or two a month. She can keep being Mum to the wee pups and use performing as her break. Everyone wins!”

“Except that performing isn’t what she wants to do, you witch!” Cain broke in rudely.

“There’s no call for that, Darius,” Cas told him. He turned back to Matt. “What do you suggest? What can we cut and what do we keep?”

“It depends on which direction we pick,” Matt answered evenly. “Whatever that turns out to be, we need to see it through, not constantly switch back and forth. If we go with Rowena’s plan, then she needs to continue the voice work. She’s making good progress with her vocal range, and she’ll only get better still if she keeps at it. But we drop the composition tutoring. Mark won’t be happy about that, but April can’t do both, not and have any energy left to devote to her children and her mate. Lord, Alpha, she’s even trying to keep up with dating Michael. It’s too much. We need to choose a direction, like I’ve said from the beginning. And these two…” Matt pointed at Cain and Rowena. “…need to sign off on it and stick to it. They bicker all the time, and it’s driving April crazy. It would drive anyone crazy.”

Castiel nodded decisively. “I understand. I’ll speak with April tonight and find out which direction she prefers…”

“She _prefers_ to be a songwriter,” Cain grumbled.

Cas growled fiercely at him, and Cain’s metaphorical ears flattened as his tail wrapped tightly between his legs. “If you interrupt me again,” Castiel warned, “I _will_ make you regret it.”

“Yes, Alpha. Apologies, Sir.”

“Good. As I was saying, April and I will select a direction, and I will ask each of you to commit to it. Matt?”

“Sir?”

“You’ll be in charge of coordination.”

Matt nodded and stood up with a deep, bracing breath.

“Cain,” Cas continued. “You are responsible for keeping April balanced during the working day and deciding moment by moment if she’s better off stepping clear of the lot of you for a break. If it turns out that she spends the lion’s share of every day as a mother to our children, then so be it. Her psychological and emotional health take precedence over her musical career. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Alpha,” Cain told him.

Cas held his gaze for several moments. “And if she decides to pursue performance instead of composition?” he posed.

Cain nodded formally. “Then that’s what we do. …But she won’t.”

Castiel’s eyes hardened. “Try again,” he said, softer in volume than in intent.

Cain sighed heavily. “Then that’s what we do, Sir. Full stop.”

“Thank you,” Cas replied testily. He turned to face the diminutive Scot. “Rowena?”

“Naturally, Alpha. Whatever the wee Ozzie phenom prefurs.”

Cas narrowed his eyes, searching for duplicity. He couldn’t bring himself to trust Rowena. He had to concede that if he had been forced to work in concert with her day in and day out, he would probably snap at her as often as Cain did. Cas felt Cain at his back, stifling a retort, and he decided to let the discussion end before Cain’s self-control slipped. He couldn’t hold Rowena to the same degree of acquiescence he did Cain. She wasn’t Pack. And what was more, she had been hired as an agent. Putting April onstage was basically her entire job. If April wasn’t going to perform, what was Rowena supposed to do for her?

“I’ll speak to all of you tomorrow. We’ll set a new game plan. Matt, please have Mark here. Cain, I want everyone who’s involved in tutoring her. Get Nicholas patched in on Skype if he can make it. We’ll meet at five-thirty. April is taking tomorrow off unless she has a commitment I’m not aware of.”

“No, Sir,” Cain answered for all of them. “Tomorrow’s clear. We’re in a holding pattern right now until she goes to Nashville for her meetups, anyway. She can’t make any more headway than superficial steps until that trip wraps up.”

“Good. I’ll bring Michael. You’re all dismissed. I’ll see you tomorrow at five-thirty.” Cas strode through the parlor and mounted the stairs two at a time.

He found April with Dean in the nursery, the two of them laughing as Dean played peek-a-boo with Jimmy. April’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, and she startled when she noticed her mate shadowing the doorway.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” she stumbled, setting Kat down on the play rug and getting to her feet. “I’m going. I only stopped in to check on them.”

“Put your hands on the wall, Omega,” Cas said firmly. Despite the fact that her sojourn to a warm, soapy bath was intended to offer her a chance to relax, her disobedience required a response. April shot Dean a look and then complied. Cas slipped her skirt down to pool on the floor. Beneath the skirt, she was bare.

Alex climbed into Dean’s lap and stared with wide eyes, scenting Alpha dominance in the air, and leaning into his Daddy for comfort. Dean chuckled at him and kissed the side of his head. The triplets paid no attention until the first blow landed with a sharp crack, and then all three heads whipped around at once.

Cas made short work of the simple consequence. It wasn’t enough to Release his mate, but he hadn’t meant for it to. He pulled her off the wall and held her in a tight embrace, stroking her hair.

“We’re going to figure it out, Kitten. Don’t worry. Go get your bath. I’ll come wash you in a bit. Just soak for me for now. Relax. Try to turn off and let me worry for you. That’s what I’m here for.” He smiled gently at her and kissed the tip of her nose. “Go on, now.”

“Thank you, Sir,” she replied. Stooping down, she collected her skirt and she dashed out, trying to make up for her prior stalling by hurrying now.

It made Cas smile.

“Pa-pa,” Alex called.

“Did you hear that?” Cas asked Dean in wonder as he sank onto one knee and held his arms open to his son. “That time it was definitely intentional! He’s talking, Dean!”

“He sure is,” Dean agreed, releasing the pup to scurry across to Cas. Cas lifted him high into the air and grinned at him.

“Good job, Alex! Say it again for me. Say, ‘Papa’.”

“Pa-Pa!” Alex answered, delighted to have earned his Alpha’s pride. “Pa-pa-pa-pa!”

“That’s my boy!” Cas cuddled him close and danced happily with him, grinning at Dean all the while.

Dean laughed.

“Has he said anything else?” Cas asked.

“You win first honors, Sir,” Dean told him proudly. “Although he’s been humming ‘M’ sounds as well. No doubt, ‘Mama’ is right on the tip of his tongue.”

Cas turned back to Alex as Dean accepted a toy from Emma and pulled her into his lap.

“Alex, can you say, ‘Ma-ma’?” Cas prompted. “Mm-mm-mm-ma-ma!” he offered, turning a hum into a syllable and overemphasizing the movement of his lips for the pup to mimic.

Alex frowned in concentration and caught Castiel’s face between his hands, holding him still.

“Mmm,” said Alex. “Mmm-mm-mm”

“Very good. What a hard worker you are,” Cas praised. “Look at you concentrate. It’s like this. Watch Papa’s mouth. Mmm-mm-ma-ma.”

“Mmm-mmm-mmmm,” Alex mimicked before breaking out in a grin and then humming happily. Cas laughed with his son and stooped to sit down in front of Dean.

“He’s so close, Dean. He’ll be talking nonstop any day now. He barely babbled, and now he’s on the cusp of full words. He inherited his parents’ acumen for verbal acuity, clearly.”

Dean snorted. “He’s gotten one word out so far, Papa. Give him a minute before you register him for Debate Club.”

Cas only grinned, leaning down to blow noisy raspberries on Alex’s neck, bringing the pup to squeal in delight and throw himself backward into his Papa’s belly. Cas caught him and tickled.

Out of the laughter, Alex cried, “Pa-pa! Pa-pa!” over and over. Jimmy joined the game, sucked in by the laughter and playfulness. Cas split his attention between both sons until all of them were in hysterics, and Kat began to wail at being left out, sitting on her bum a few feet away.

Cas took pity on her and pulled her closer by her ankles, nearly toppling her and surprising her into a laugh in place of her cries, a laugh that turned to giggles when her Papa’s five o’clock shadow scratched at her tender skin, and the wet noises he made into her throat cracked her up. She tugged at his hair and cackled.

Playing with all of them at once could be a challenge now that all the pups could move about and focus on their need to be center of attention. It wasn’t easy to keep all four entertained, and Cas calmed their laughter before they overdid the play into an overstimulated chaos that would inevitably lead to tears.

He sent Alex to Dean, and he cuddled two of his triplets in his arms. Emma shared the lap she’d claimed, and Dean sang a song to them that Cas didn’t know. Cas had to hum awkwardly as he swayed, grinning all the while.

Once the song ended, the four pups wiggled free of their parents in favor of exploring their play room. Their fathers watched without interfering, interested in learning their rhythms and their interests. Emma and Jimmy sat together, sharing a set of blocks amicably. Kat pulled bins off the shelf one by one, investigating what each held before moving to the next. Alex chewed on a stuffed wolf and watched her.

“How did it go with Jody this morning?” Cas asked as he handed a block back to Jimmy.

Dean snorted rudely.

“That bad?”

Dean shook his head. “What good is it to be alpha if the betas can lecture us as if we’re Omega?”

Cas’ eyes widened. “She lectured you?”

“Oh, yeah. She let me have it. Both barrels. Unloaded on me. Left me stuttering and speechless. I didn’t know what hit me, man.” Dean scooted closer to the shelf and began to return some of the items to their bins.

“What’d she say?” Cas asked, curious.

Dean counted items off on his fingers. “One, she reminded me that training Michael in Kansas was NOT her idea. Two, she said I should back her up, not take Michael’s side since my first responsibility in this instance is to my job as Training Department lead. Three, she said if I assign another mentor to Michael, she’s out. Four, she said…”

Dean paused and bit his lip.

“Dean? What was four?”

“She said Michael wouldn’t need to snack on clients if he was getting enough to eat at home.” Dean’s cheeks reddened, and he focused on helping Kat put toys in the bin she’d just dumped.

“I see,” Cas answered. “And how did you respond?”

“I told you. I gaped like a fish. I didn’t know what to say. That wasn’t at all how I pictured that conversation going. I was going to put the fear of god in her for binding my mate. I was going to scare her shitless and attach Joshua to her side like a remora. She basically laughed in my face and then said, _‘Now see here, pup.’_”

Cas chuckled. “Is she right?” he asked carefully.

“You know she is,” Dean answered with a pout. “She knows she’s right, too, or she wouldn’t have said it. I forgot who I was dealing with, C.J.”

Cas let the statement thicken. He got up on his knees and crawled across to Alex to distract him from slapping at Kat’s backside. Alex had begun mimicking both the spankings and the more risqué body movements he’d witnessed, but his imitations weren’t alarming. It was a natural phase, and he would grow out of it. Once Cas had Alex on his lap, he prompted Dean to continue. “What are you going to do? You’ve already promised Michael that you would be adding another mentor.”

Dean sighed. “I backpedal my ass off, I guess. Backtrack. Admit I fucked up. Tell Michael he doesn’t get off that easy. He can’t evade Jody forever. He needs to straighten up and take her instructions head-on. I need to stand behind her. I owe her that. I’m still not convinced that putting ropes on a 19 was the only option, but I can’t argue that it didn’t get his attention. And I need to give Michael’s wolf more of a workout than I’ve been doing.”

“That’s a lot to take on by yourself, love,” Cas said vaguely, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He let Alex amble up and take shaky steps out of his lap and toward the pile of blocks his siblings were enjoying. “You’ve promised me a portion of your backside as well, and I don’t mean to release you from that promise. But Michael’s need is important, and there isn’t anyone but you available to him.”

“There’s April,” Dean pouted, looking at the floor, knowing he sounded petulant.

“He’s not Tertiary with April, Dean. You know that. You can’t force something on them that isn’t what they want.”

“Then what do you suggest, Alpha?” Dean challenged. “I’ve only got one ass. Heaven knows I’d sacrifice it to both of you if that would solve this, but it won’t. I can only take so much. I’m already giving his wolf my Submission every day at breakfast and two or three times a week in the bedroom. What more can we do?”

Cas leveled a hard look at Dean, and the Sub lowered his eyes immediately. “No, Dean. Look at me.”

Dean rolled his head on his shoulders uncomfortably, but he eventually met his Dom’s eyes. Castiel’s brow rose as he spoke, signaling an end to a mutually equal conversation. They were Top and Bottom now. That simple shift in tone and his brow rising was all it took to put Dean one level down.

“Are you sincere in your inability to balance between the two of us, or is that your brat talking?”

“Come on, Alpha,” Dean whined. “Think of how much you two ask of me. There’s not enough to go round.”

Cas crossed his arms across his chest and tilted his head in a wordless, ‘Really, Dean?’

“I’m just saying, …” Dean didn’t know what else to say. His eyes hit the colorful patchwork rug again, and Castiel cleared his throat.

“I can’t look at you when you’re doing that with your eyes,” Dean protested feebly.

“Is that so?” Cas asked.

Dean huffed and looked up. “Okay, fine. You got me. I’m being a brat. Whatever. But the point is that Michael’s in the doghouse. He’s paid up for what he did last Friday, but I need to keep him in thumbscrews so he knows I mean business. How’s it gonna go if I ask for a scene from him through his wolf right now? How do I maintain pressure on his Omega when my brat is rolling belly up and begging for a strapping?”

“I suggest you talk to him, Dean. Lay it all out there just like you did to me. Explain that what you do with him in the playroom doesn’t alter his responsibility to respect you at work. You’re going to have to trust Michael to make that jump. Either that, or he can’t work for you.”

“He doesn’t work for me,” Dean protested. “He works for Benny.”

“He works for _you_ while he’s in training, Dean. Until he earns his certification, you and he have to manage a split relationship. During his clinicals, you are his Top. At home, I want you backing down and Submitting to him more often than just at breakfast. For now, if he needs more support than his Omega can get from you in this dynamic, bring your concerns to me, and we’ll figure out together how to manage him.”

_”I’m_ his alpha, Sir,” Dean protested possessively.

“I understand, Dean. I’m not suggesting someone else Top him at home. I’m suggesting we funnel him through that experience with you as alpha enough to find his balance and then assist you both in flipping back over to put him back on Top. I’m suggesting you allow me or Sam to act as spotter. Emma, we do not throw the blocks.”

Dean chewed on it. Kat dumped another bin.

“You’re going in to help April bathe?” he asked.

“I’ll meet you at dinner,” Cas agreed. “I expect to expend some sexual energies on my mate, but I promise you I’ll keep enough in reserve to see properly to you tonight. Dean, if you can talk things over with Michael after dinner, make a game plan, get yourselves squared away, play a little even, I’ll reward you when the others go to bed. And I’ll show you that you have enough for both of us. Let me show you.”

“Tonight?” Dean asked.

“Stay up late with me,” Cas flirted shamelessly. “Skip the beer at dinner and play hard with me tonight. Maybe we can kick your upcoming fall a little further down the street.”

Dean chewed his lower lip. “You’re asking me to flip from alpha to Sub and back again at lightning speed, C.J. Over and over again.”

Cas scoffed. “That’s nothing you haven’t done on your own countless times, Pet. And really, I’m asking the opposite. I want you Submissive at home as often as makes sense for as long as Michael needs the extra support.”

“Nuh-uh,” Dean countered. “The pups need me alpha. Tony needs me Primary-adult, at the very least. I have household responsibilities that I can’t do as a Sub, not to mention whatever work I bring home. And I can’t be your number two as a Sub.”

“Mm, sounds like a challenge,” Cas teased, knowing he was going to win.

Dean sighed again and rolled down to sprawl on his back. Kat and Alex immediately dogpiled him. “All that work to find access to my alpha around you and Michael both, and now you’re turning me over and sending me back the way I came.”

Cas chuckled happily. “Training never ends, my Sub.”

Dean mimicked him rudely, _”Training never ends, my Sub…,”_ and Cas rolled him over on the spot, tugged his pants down with a fist on the outside of each thigh and spanked him hard and fast, leaving Dean unbound and free to attempt an escape if he felt like it as the two pups scattered. Dean covered his head with his arms, but he didn’t crawl away. He lifted up on his knees, offering his ass more fully to his Top, and feeling the pain send licks of flame along his nerve-endings.

“Pa-pa!” Alex called, pointing at Dean’s reddened backside. “Da-da!”

“That’s right, Ace,” Cas told the pup as he finished up and tapped Dean’s thigh to indicate he could lower himself back down and dress again. “Papa spanked Daddy, didn’t he? Daddy was naughty, but he’s a good boy, even when he misbehaves, and Papa loves him.”

“Da-da!”

Dean laughed as he rolled onto his side after hitching his slacks back up. Alex scrambled to him and kissed his cheek. “Thanks, Ace. That makes me feel better.”

“Will you see to their dinner and get them bathed, Dean?”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Dean replied cheerfully, all stress abandoned for the moment. “What are we having for supper?” he asked the pups, and his enthusiasm pulled all four of them to him. Cas stood up and began to straighten the play space. Dean fell in with him, encouraging assistance from the pups that they weren’t especially interested in offering. Between the two fathers, the room returned to tidy in no time, and Dean had two of the pups sitting with books in their cribs while he carted the other two downstairs.

Cas left him at the stairway bannister with a kiss and a wink. “I’ll see you at dinner, love,” Cas said. “No alcohol tonight.”

“Yes, Sir,” Dean called back over his shoulder, and Alex mimicked him with a “yesah!” that made both of them laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have three more chapters in varying degrees of finishedness. I'm going to spread them out though. There's such a thing as too much all at once.


	6. Monday, December 17, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Ketch - just an ordinary day in the life of an E.O. 
> 
> Dean's evening continued - is there enough of him to go round? The Alpha believes there is, and he's usually right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation from chapter 5 - finishing the day with a lot of action.
> 
> Y'all, please be careful out there. Take the warnings seriously. A little common sense, thorough hand washing, and social distancing is what each of us can do in real time to make a difference and slow the spread. Hoarding toilet paper isn't going to help, despite Chuck's prescient warnings. Panicking never helped any issue ever, but if you suffer from anxiety disorders like I do, it's to turn off the 'what ifs'.
> 
> And, my friends, I just completed the most exhausting four-day work week ever. My tank is empty, and I'm a little shell-shocked with the speed of my departmental meltdown. We'll see just where critical mass as far as how many individuals it takes to run a laboratory before it all collapses on itself actually is.

Sam hurried the length of the building, running late to his session, scrolling through the calendar on his phone and muttering to himself. Facility clients, students, and employees dodged him. Sam mumbled an apology when his distraction led to a direct collision now and then, but he hustled on, hardly noticing his own wake. This session was full, and he needed to finish on time, or he’d never make it across campus before class started.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he stated sincerely, closing the door behind him. Ketch was already stationed in his booth at the front of the room, but he couldn’t start until he had a partner. Sam took in the line of nervous wolves, counting by twos in his head. There were a lot of them this week. “Wow, we have our work cut out today,” he observed, laying his bag on the counter and pocketing his phone.

“And we’re not making much progress,” Ketch chided without heat.

“I know, man. I got caught on a conference call with Benny and Dayton,” Sam replied. “Thanks for waiting for me. I’ll make it up to you. Let’s get the ball rolling, what d’ya say?” Sam clapped his hands and dry washed them a little to warm them. Ketch nodded, all business, and stood up to address the lines.

He cleared his throat.

“All right, listen up!” Ketch called. “All the way in the back, give me your full attention so we can get through this with a minimum of fuss and confusion.” He stepped to the edge of the dais and stopped there, planting his feet and crossing his arms over his chest, a picture of dominant posturing that his English accent lent credence to.

“Some of you know the drill from experience. To you folks, welcome back,” he said in a clear voice that caused a modicum of chuckling and nudging within the ranks. He added an ironic smirk to lighten his tone without negating his authority. Behind him, Sam began laying out implements and logging onto his account. He adjusted the security cameras, checking their positioning and clarity.

“If you’re new to this process, relax. No one’s died from corporal punishment yet. We’re going to take care of you. Here’s how it works. Beta Sam and I will call you up by name two by two. When you hear your name, step lively. We all have things to do this afternoon, and no one leaves this room until we’ve taken each and every one of you in turn. Once you’ve taken your swats, you’ll stand for fifteen minutes at the settling wall. When you get there, set the timer and put your nose on the wall. Lace your hands behind your head. Do not cover your backside. Do not rub the sting out. No touching. No talking. No leaving early. Wipe your nose print off the wall with a sterile wipe when the timer goes off and get dressed. Once you’re done, find somewhere to sit or stand and watch the proceedings until everyone’s dismissed together. There is to be _no talking_ while you wait, neither before you step up to greet us, nor afterward. Do you understand?”

There was a sad muttering from the floor.

Sam turned around, finished with his preparations. He clapped his hands percussively and sent a jolt of startlement out into the group.

“You were asked a question!” he growled. “We expect answers when we ask for them! Do you understand?”

A much clearer response echoed back this time, a clamor of ‘Yes, Sir’ and ‘Yes, beta’.

“Better,” Sam told them assertively. He nodded to Ketch and stepped back one stride.

“All right, then,” Ketch picked back up, raising his voice to carry. “You should all have brought your punishment orders with you. Little white piece of paper with your name and a code on it. Is there anyone who doesn’t have a slip? Raise your hand.”

No one moved.

“I’ll ask one more time. If you don’t have it, we can look it up, so you’re not getting out of this, but we use your copy as a verification check. If you forgot it or lost it, we can figure it out if you tell us now. If you get to your turn without fessing up, we add fifteen paddle swats. Anyone? Now’s the time to say something. Don’t be shy. There’s always someone.”

At the back, an unsteady hand wavered into the air. “Sir? I didn’t know I needed to bring it with me.”

Ketch nodded. “Happens all the time,” he told the poor frightened girl. “Take a quick look at the slip in your neighbor’s hand there. Read to me what it says in bold black letters at the top.”

“Um,” she stumbled, peering to her left at the paper an Omega held steady for her to read. “It says ‘Present this order at your assigned punishment session’.”

“That’s what I thought it said,” Ketch replied, still speaking in an auditorium voice. “Never hurts to check that they didn’t alter the wording.”

“I’m sorry, Sir,” the beta called bravely back.

“Atta girl,” he smiled. “Better. Anyone else? Just the one?”

No one else spoke up.

“Five extra swats for failure to bring your own order. Better than fifteen,” he observed. “Thanks for being honest and letting us know now. Come on up and stand here to the side. I’ll look your name up in a minute and get you situated. All right, are there any questions?”

A hand in the middle of the pack shot up stridently.

Sam smirked and turned his back on them to hide his amusement. There was always one. Ketch pointed, and the man stepped forward.

“I don’t deserve to be here,” he said aggressively. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Where do I go to get a review of this sentence? I wanna talk to whoever’s in charge. You’re not touching me, beta!” 

Ketch smacked his lips and looked across the dais at his teammate. Sam found his control and turned back around. Ketch used the moment to confer with the terrified beta who hadn’t brought her orders. They turned to the computer monitor, heads close together, and Ketch pulled her rapidly up, checked her ID photo and scribbled out a quick form for her to hold onto until it was her turn.

“I’m in charge,” Sam said calmly, stepping forward and allowing his wolf to add gravity to his bearing. “Reviews take place _prior to_ the punishment session. If you wanted to challenge your punishment, you should’ve done that right away. I’m certain you knew that. If you’ve appealed and lost, I can’t help you. If you want to try your luck appealing to me, be my guest. But I warn you, I don’t offer leniency very often, and most of the time, I increase the punishment either in length or intensity, sometimes both, if you waste everyone’s time. If you’re innocent, and you’re sure of your position, let’s talk. In my years of experience, I’ve only come across two or three people who were truly sent here erroneously. It’s happened. We’re not infallible. But the rules are the rules. If you broke one, you gotta pay for it. No excuses.”

“I didn’t break any of your stupid rules!” the man declared with an aggressive step forward. 

“What does your form say?” Sam gestured to the wrinkled paper in the man’s fist.

Somewhere in his mid-twenties, the young man looked out of place among a sea of younger faces, all milling about now that they realized that there was no need for an orderly line. “Some douchebag in a lab coat said I was disturbing his office hours,” the man spit back. “I wasn’t any louder than anyone else in the hall. He didn’t even care if it was me or someone else. He just stormed out of his office, fisted my shirt – stretched it out too – and put me on my knees in front of the rest of my class!”

“Your name?” Sam asked evenly.

“Josiah Middleton.”

“Josiah, who signed your form?”

“No fucking clue. It’s chicken scratch,” the beta declared in disgust.

Ketch sauntered back to the keyboard mounted on the countertop and began typing rapidly.

“Bring it here,” Sam instructed. “I’m proficient in douchebag chicken scratch.”

Josiah shoved his way rudely to the front and presented his form to Sam as if bad handwriting would prove his innocence. Sam scoffed.

“That’s, uh, that’s our head researcher, Dr. Tran,” he informed the unfortunate young man. “Not a man with a lot of patience for shenanigans in the hallway while he’s working.”

“It wasn’t me,” the beta persisted.

On the screen mounted to the wall above the counter where Ketch typed, a video loaded and began to play. In it, marked with a timestamp and Josiah’s name and punishment order number, the unruly twenty-something man jostled his way boorishly down the hallway with his friends, shouting obscenities at the Ozzie class on their way in the opposite direction.

Sam didn’t watch the video. He scratched idly at his upper lip and cast his gaze out the window along the long axis of the room. He didn’t need to see the specifics. Keven never sent anyone for punishment without getting his documentation in order.

In the video, several of Josiah’s classmates joined in the hooting, but his voice rang out clearly above the others. He was brutish and childish and loud enough to be incontrovertibly the ringleader. When the video ended, Sam turned stern eyes back on the beta.

“You were saying?”

“We were heading to lunch. Everyone gets a little keyed up before lunch,” he tried weakly.

“Dr. Tran listed only one transgression for you, Josiah,” Ketch told the room, scrolling through the entry in the computer. “That’s disorderly conduct causing work disruption. Interesting that he didn’t include Omega harassment. What do you think, Sam? Harassment?”

“Definitely,” Sam agreed. “That’s forty more on top of what you walked in here to get. Care to keep protesting?”

“This is _bullshit!_” the man growled. He ripped his form in two and bundled his way through the crowd like a bulldozer. Sam watched him go. Some people just refused to be held accountable, and they had a much harder journey than those who allowed themselves to be molded. The door slammed behind Josiah.

Sam clapped his hands again. “All right, then. Let’s get this over with. Beta Ketch, who’s up first?”

“You’re just gonna let him walk?” someone near the front asked in dismay.

Sam chuckled. “He won’t get far. We’ve got alphas watching the doors. They’ll pull him into a side room and chill him out. We’ll get to him when the rest of you leave. Look, folks, the doors aren’t locked. We’re not locking anyone in this room. If anyone panics and makes a run for it, those doors will let you out. Don’t think we’re here to scare you. The monitors are rigorously trained to handle true panic attacks just as they’re trained to handle blowhards like Josiah.”

Ketch cleared his throat. “Asperice Cleavely and Genevieve Branson,” he called. “First up means first over with. Front and center, ladies.”

Two pale faces wended their way forward and surrendered their slips to Ketch. He handed one to Sam before studying the other. Both Doms typed the number on the papers into their keyboard and verified the punishments assigned. Sam led Asperice to his booth as Ketch took the shorter of the two into his.

The booths had curtains on the sides but were open to the front of the room. Neither girl would get any privacy. Speaking firmly but softly, both E.O.’s addressed the misbehavior in quick words, clarified that the betas both understood the significance of their misconduct and why they deserved a painful correction.

Both girls stripped out of their shoes and pants and leaned over the bench in the middle of each booth without needing any harsh words to put them there. They were each already in remorseful mindsets, primed to take a swift correction to heart.

Sam put Ketch out of his mind. He spoke gently to the girl, instructing her to lift her hips and slide a little further onto the support. There was no call to strike an ugly authoritarian tone with a wolf who was already there, poised to soak it in, ready to see it through and learn to do better. The E.O.’s were there to dole out consequences, not freak people out or shame them into submission. Sam checked the order once more for power and count. He put his hand on her back, declared his intention stoically, and struck her right thigh hard, leaving it pink. He hit her left thigh next, just as hard, and followed that with a strike to her right crease. Sam set an even pace, concentrating on her legs more than her butt, giving her an intense experience that had her hands white on the bar and her thighs quivering. 

At fifty, he stopped. He asked her a couple of simple questions to check her stamina and overall condition. She answered with a sniffly stuffiness. Sam judged her suitably fit to continue, and he selected a leather strap from among the implements he’d brought with him.

Asperice shrieked as the strokes of Sam’s strap striped her thighs. Twice, her hand wrapped round to shield her, and twice Sam paused to put it back where it belonged. He ended the punishment at twenty moderate, even strokes. She’d been assigned a 9-G reprimand with a suggested hearty warm-up and a flag that she responded better when the attention focused on her legs instead of her buttocks. 

The beta-Submissive wept piteously into the support, fully rebuked and ready to apologize. Sam let her stumble through the words inelegantly. It was the mindset he sought more than a perfectly formed verbal eloquence at the culmination of a successful correction, and Sam was pleased. He helped her stand. He hugged her hard, wiped her tears before handing her the tissues, and sent her to stand against the wall, instructing her on how to activate the timer above her station and reminding her not to touch her butt until the timer beeped. Sam handed her clothes to her and nudged her toward the settling wall. He watched her find a spot, set her clothes on the bench behind her and start the timer. She glanced over her shoulder at him and graced him with a shaky smile before setting her nose to the wall and lacing her fingers behind her head.

Ketch finished up a minute or two after Sam did, his own charge dragging ass much more reluctantly than Sam’s had, but equally red-bottomed and chastised. Sam pulled up the next two names and called them forward.

It was a boy and a girl this time, both Omega-Neutrals, caught in unrelated acts of inappropriate sexual contact. Sam didn’t press for details. That wasn’t his responsibility. The reprobates will have had been lectured fully already. Today’s session was to sink the hook in and set it.

Sam was a little surprised that his young delinquent had earned himself a 15-J correction for something as simple as fucking in the bathroom. The slip wasn’t very helpful, so Sam dredged through his accessible record.

Ah.

Not a first offence.

Not even close.

Sam stifled a chuckle at the kid’s persistence. Odd that he hadn’t come across this boy himself before now considering how many corrections he had amassed in such a short time. But Sam wasn’t onsite as much anymore. He invested far more hours into his PhD studies than he did fulfilling the daily E.O. grind. That distraction, added to his multiple weekly meetings and mentor sessions with Benny meant Sam saw more faces in the room that he didn’t know than those he did.

“You know the drill,” Sam said to the cocky young Omega. “Get comfy. We’re in this for the long haul. Shout if you need a break.”

They worked their way systematically through the horde. Each E.O. waited for the other to finish before calling up the next pair. They took short breaks to stretch their arms and take in water. They kept an eye on the settling wall, but charges at that stage generally managed themselves, standing pat and obeying the rule to keep their hands off their sore butts until the timers beeped them free to dress and find a place to wait out the rest of the session. The room’s mood shifted from antsy / anxious to quiet and subdued as the numbers waiting diminished and the numbers spanked rose.

It was a workout, to be sure. Sam’s bicep ached as he checked the remaining list. Three more each. It came out to an even number, not including Josiah, still waiting in a cool dark room by himself. Sam checked on Ketch. The man was a machine, untiring through the lengthening afternoon session. He nodded a bracing confirmation back at Sam and took a long slug from his water bottle.

Sam told Ketch he’d take Josiah at the end, giving Ketch a twenty minute head start on filing his final report. Ketch didn’t argue. He summoned the next two.

Beta-Dominants. 

There was just something about Presenting with a Secondary designation – a second-place finish – that tended to turn these wolves into assholes. Sam had no sympathy. He was as beta-Dominant as they come. He knew all the excuses, all the insecurities, all the whinging, pathetic justifications they called up for their shitty domineering bully tactics, and Sam let his muscles explain where they’d made wrong turns. He rarely felt tired up against one of these guys. If he could get through to them now, it might mean fewer Omegas or Subs in crisis later.

They were just so…

Damned.

Hard.

Headed!

Sam whacked the paddle down with emphasis and a slight grunt. God, but he hated having to do this to the same ass over and over again.

This one was an employee, not a client, so Sam knew her very well indeed, and she shouldn’t still be making the same mistakes a year in.

The body before him shifted a little but didn’t dodge, didn’t cry out, didn’t so much as huff. She took it, each and every stroke, and she held.

Sam hit the top limit for the level he was assigned to deliver, hit it with regret. He felt like a few more wouldn’t hurt. Maybe an exclamation point to the essay he wrote across her ass might make all the difference. But that wasn’t his call either, and this one had Castiel’s name on the form. Cas wasn’t one to go easy on a repeat offender. If he’d assigned less than Sam would have, there was a reason. Sam was in no position to challenge the Alpha’s directive.

“On your feet,” Sam said gruffly, unable to hide his disdain completely. “I don’t want to see you here again any time soon,” he admonished sternly. “I’ve spent enough time looking at your ass.” She didn’t get a hug, which was mutual. She wouldn’t have accepted it.

Sam sighed as she strutted smugly to the wall, tossed her clothes on the bench, and made a show of setting the timer and letting it count down a full minute before finally settling into position. Ketch caught Sam’s eye, noting that Sam saw it too and wasn’t planning to let her get away with the insult. Follow-up would come later though, not now. She was one of Bobby’s employees and a fine trauma nurse, but there was no place for her long term in a facility like this if she couldn’t kennel her wolf when someone challenged it.

Sam’s wolf longed to show hers what a real challenge looked like. This wasn’t the time or place though.

Ketch looked out to the floor. All but the last two were crowded close to the walls, either standing and leaning or sitting miserably up against the wall watching the end of the session. Some of the Omegas were laid out on the floor on their bellies, holding hands with someone they didn’t even know, offering one another comfort. Staying for the full program and witnessing each other’s corrections let each and every participant take more away with them than their own experience. The scents alone spoke volumes to their back brains.

Ketch beckoned the last two to the dais and held his hand out for their slips. “Don’t worry, fellas. We still have enough in the tank to make your wait worthwhile. Fear not.”

“Very funny,” the blond dude grumbled, unbuckling his belt like he knew the routine by rote. Sam took the other one, letting Ketch clash with the blond. Sam could sense Ketch’s wolf engage with the beta’s. Sometimes kismet played a hand. It was always helpful to have a harmonic between the wolves of the punisher and the punishee when you could make that happen. It made the interaction more memorable, more effective, more satisfying when your wolf really connected with its charge. Ketch had veritable sparks shooting from his fingertips and his eyes, and Sam smirked, scenting the air and letting it speak to his wolf in turn.

“You’re Stan?” Sam asked, reading the slip.

“Yessir.”

“Stan, did you know it’s against the rules to throw food in the lunchroom?”

“Of course I did. I got carried away. It was stupid. I deserve to have my butt roasted, Sir, and I deserve what I’m gonna get when I get home. Can we get it over with? The waiting is killing me.”

“You bet. Take off everything below the waist and get up on the structure. Your order says he wants you paddled. You’ve taken a paddle before?” Sam readied himself while the kid climbed into place.

“Look, you don’t have to baby me. I’m not going to break.”

Sam sighed when he got a good view of the boy’s butt. He had yellowing and purpling marks all over his ass and thighs. There were new marks on top of older ones, surface bruises mixed in with deep damage. Sam consulted his file.

Stan wasn’t boarding onsite. He was a local, driven in daily by his mate, recently Mated and dispatched to live with his alpha mate’s Pack. There was no mention of a preference for impact play in his playlife or his Submissive balancing. He wasn’t a masochist or a brat. Someone as even-keeled as Stan had no reason Sam could see to be sporting damage like this. His Facility record was clean but for this one incident.

Sam looked at the order. It was signed by a middle manager on the legal wing. He barely knew the guy. Sam pulled his trusty maplewood out of his pocket and rubbed his hand firmly over it to warm it up a little. Aiming carefully, he swapped it down square onto Stan’s ass, pulling slightly at the last moment to land it with a simple _’smack’_ rather than his usual hard thud. Sam schooled his face to keep those watching from realizing he was pulling his strokes, and he watched Stan’s shoulders tighten up at each swat. 

He was in a great deal of pain. Sam couldn’t stop his punishment from happening, but he could prevent the boy from taking a new injury. Sam shortened the count and the intensity to the degree that he was allowed. It was still a lot. When he finished, he checked carefully, satisfied that he hadn’t added any new bruises and had still sent the ACRI’s message loud and clear that misbehavior wasn’t tolerated.

Beyond that, Sam could only give the kid a good, tight hug and follow up later with a phone call to Submissive Resources to have his home life investigated. Sam suspected abuse, but bruises like that could come from other sources too, not all of them alarming.

Dean had bruises like that on his ass more often than not.

It’s possible Stan’s file was incomplete.

But it was worth looking into.

Sam sent Ketch home, along with those who’d completed their wall standing. The room cleared slowly. Sam sat on the spanking bench on Ketch’s side and swung his legs, waiting for the timers to beep. When the last two dressed and scurried out, Sam slipped out behind them.

An alpha monitor flagged him down.

In a dimmed and unfurnished room, he found Josiah sitting on the floor with his arms wrapped idly around his knees, staring at nothing.

“Up you go. Follow me,” Sam said with no introduction.

“I can’t believe you made me wait that long. My Alpha’s going to kill me. You’ll be getting a phone call. Just you wait. Do you know who I am?”

“Save it,” Sam said curtly. His class would be starting soon on the other side of the campus. He didn’t have time for a lengthy discussion. “Shoes, off. Pants, off. Underwear, off,” Sam drilled as he led the asshole back into the correction room. Sam’s wolf didn’t give him any chance for defiance, shepherding the beta into place on the power of his designation alone. “What you take from this experience is your own business. I don’t need to know. Get your ass up onto that structure and hold on. I don’t appreciate being disrespected or lied to.” Sam began with his hand, hardly waiting until the man, who should have been old enough to know better, got himself placed. Sam made him feel it, finding that his own wolf had some definite opinions about this guy’s attitude.

When his hand began to burn, Sam switched to a level C paddle, with half-inch holes drilled through it every couple of inches. It was no toy, and Sam knew how to get the most out of it. The man’s breath caught at the first hard swat, and he was soon crying out in pain at each subsequent swing. Sam had him bawling by the time he reached twenty. He went ahead and added those extra forty for Ozzie harassment too. He had ample evidence to support his decision. He wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t enjoy tripling the dude’s count, and he wasn’t in any mood to feel sympathetic to his pain. 

Sam chose a springy cane for the last round. Adding extra strokes to a punishment for defiance during the session usually meant putting more time in with the mid-level implement, but Sam’s wolf suggested he put the cane to use explaining the way Sam saw things in relation to this young man’s protests. Originally scheduled for five with the cane, Sam set him to fifteen, feeling like the synchronicity of tripling both segments sent a powerful message. By the time his striped ass was allowed to ooze off the bench, the beta’s tune had changed appreciably.

His face was as much a disaster as his butt, but Sam let his tears and his snot run unchecked. He set the timer himself and stood right behind the sniveling beta during his wall time, slapping his hand down every time he tried to rub. He kept a weather eye on the clock. His time was short, but he could make it to class if he jogged. 

Barely.

But Sam meant business, and he wasn’t about to shortchange a blowhard just because his own schedule was tight.

He’d have to do his reports at home after class.

Damnit.

Again.

The timer beeped. Sam reached up and clicked it off.

He slapped the man’s butt one more time.

“That’s it, beta. Grab your clothes and head out. Don’t let me see you here again.”

“I’m reporting you,” the man sniffed.

Sam sighed, gathering his supplies.

“You do that. Make it a good one,” he added. “Contact info is on the website. My name’s Sam Winchester. Please spell it correctly.”

Sam followed him out, watching him slide uncomfortably into a waiting sedan. He waved solemnly when he saw the beta point at him, and then he broke into a light, distance-eating jog, putting his long legs to use.

He made it with three minutes to spare and a sweat-soaked body. Sam huffed his breath back down. He doused his face with water in the restroom and took a chair in the back corner as far from the majority of students as he could get. It was a small class. They had room to avoid him. Most of them chose to do so.

Sarah shot him an odd look from the front row and removed her bag from the seat she was saving for him. He sent her a thumbs up and a weak grin, but he didn’t switch seats. Sam pulled his notebook and a pen free of his bag and wiped his brow.

Time to switch gears.

Cas left him at the stairway bannister with a kiss and a wink. “I’ll see you at dinner, love,” Cas said. “No alcohol tonight.”

“Yes, Sir,” Dean called back over his shoulder, and Alex mimicked him with a “yesah!” that made both of them laugh.

Dean beamed. “That’s your third word, Ace! Look at you go, man. Big kiss for Daddy!” Kat wedged a pudgy hand in between Dean’s mouth and Alex’s cheek, earning herself a play growl from her Daddy and an attempt to catch that hand with his teeth as he descended the stairs. She chortled at his snapping, pulling her hand free and ducking her body into his chest. He laughed easily with them both, enjoying the simple playfulness of his pups and a weight off his shoulders now that his dreaded talk at Tessa’s was behind him.

Dean arranged Alex and Kat in their seats in the kitchen, handing them off for Tony to keep an eye on while Dean popped back up for the other two. How was it that Cas made all of his troubles seem simple? They weren’t simple. They were anything but. Dean knew that the complex dynamics between the four of them were a spider’s web tangle. But Cas spoke, and the tangles fell loose in his fingers.

Dean wanted to show his husband that he could balance on his Submissive side as he’d learned to do on his alpha. He wanted to prove he had the control necessary to flip from one to the other intentionally as the situation demanded. He wanted Cas to be proud of him. He wanted to earn that wink and the confident nod that went with it. 

Dinner for the pups was baked fish, it turned out, a favorite of all four. The triplets were allowed a chance to manipulate the morsels of flaky fish and steamed veggies in their clumsy fists, but Dean made sure each of them swallowed enough bites to fill their bellies.

Lupin pups require solid foods much earlier than Primate humans, and though all four of them were still nursing, they couldn’t rely entirely on milk to supply their dietary needs anymore, especially Alex, who only nursed now at bedtime and first thing in the morning.

Alex drank cow’s milk from a sippy cup while the other three drained a bottle each of pumped milk. April’s lactation couldn’t begin to keep up with the needs of her three pups. No one had expected her to. In the wild packs, when one Omega gave birth to a larger litter than she could feed by herself, their nutritional needs were spread among the rest of the Pup-bearing mothers. The lowest ranked Omegas, once stimulated to lactate after bearing their own first pups, could expect to be called upon to nurse any pups in the Pack for as long as their milk supply held out. Some of them didn’t stop nursing pups for decades. It was often a point of pride for Omega mothers, proving their fertility and their sustainable worth in a tangible way and giving them an excuse to wallow in the care of others as the Pack doted on them and fed them inexhaustible quantities of nutritious foods.

April’s pups were beginning to wean already, preferring the silicone nipple to the flesh one, but April maintained her milk supply by pumping every few hours and nursing when the wiggly triplets deigned to hold still. In that way, she found she could stretch out her touch to their little bellies and their immature immune systems longer, even as they seemed to be pulling away. April still nursed each of them a couple of times every day, but it was getting more difficult to convince them to settle down with her when there were all kinds of fun things they could be doing instead.

Once they were all sated, Dean enlisted Gabriel into hoisting the pups back upstairs for their baths. Dean liked to bathe them all together, but doing so was a two-man job. Gabe sorted pajamas and readied diapers while Dean scrubbed little faces and little butts and let them splash a bit.

Kat came out first, as usual. Dean handed her slippery body into Gabe’s towel-covered hands, and Gabe whisked her away for drying and dressing. Dean was painfully aware that Gabe and Kali had tried countless times now to conceive and had come up dry every cycle so far. He watched Gabe for indications that assisting with nieces and nephews was beginning to grate, but so far, Gabe seemed copacetic.

Gabe got Kat situated on the floor with her favorite book and her damp hair tidily combed and came back for the next wiggly body. In no time, all four pups were settled quietly in footed pajamas in a dimmed room. Gabriel stayed until Eunice arrived with her knitting basket to watch over their quiet evening play, and then he joined Dean in heading down to dinner. The smell from downstairs was mouthwatering. Gabe pocketed the baby monitor, but Dean stole it back when they reached the dining room, and he handed it to Michael instead.

“Hey, babe, how was class?” Dean asked, bending down for a kiss as Michael slipped the monitor into his own pocket.

“It sucked ass as usual, alpha,” Michael told him. “I swear Professor Linnear has it out for me. No one else in the class gets called down like a six-year-old. I’m barely allowed to breathe in that room. And by the time I get home, the pups are already headed to bed. I’m missing everything! And for what? So some ass-monkey can tell me to sit still and keep my hands to myself?”

“Oh, man, sorry to hear that,” Dean commiserated. He slipped into his chair at the foot of the table and squeezed Michael’s hand. “Have some dinner, man. You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten. Maybe read the kiddos their story before bed. Don’t forget, you’ve got them all morning. You’re not missing everything, Michael.”

“Alex said his first word, Dean, and I was in class!”

Dean pressed his lips together. He put a bracing hand on the back of Michael’s neck and held him firmly. “You’re a terrific mother. Those pups adore you. They light up when you walk in. You’re doing everything right. Sweetheart, we’re all gonna miss some bits here and there. It sucks, I know, but it’s not the end of the world. I missed Ace’s first steps. Cas was in San Diego when the triplets tried solid food for the first time. April missed that first word by, like, moments tonight. But we do what we can. We’re there for the important stuff, Michael, the everyday stuff, giving them a home and teaching them they can trust us. Please don’t start a scoreboard over who missed which milestone. That road leads to resentments we can’t fix.”

“I know,” Michael replied. “But I don’t like it. I feel like hitting something,” Michael groused as he spooned lima beans onto his plate beside a long link of bratwurst. 

Dean cleared his throat, and Michael looked up, then looked around. “What? Too much? I’m sorry, guys. Alpha. I’m just really cranky. Don’t mind me.”

“Michael,” Cas said from the opposite end of the table. “You’re tired and your bad temperament is understandable, and while I appreciate that it’s unwise to allow too much venting over dinner where one out of sorts wolf might turn everyone’s mood sour, no one’s castigating you for answering your mate’s question. Let’s try to move on now and enjoy each other’s company.”

“Oh. Thank you, Alpha.” Michael glanced up the table at him but turned toward his own mate when Dean touched his arm.

“Michael, man, can we talk after dinner? Just you and me?” Dean had switched to a cautious tone and a submissive slant to his expression, and Michael frowned.

“Hey,” he said, tucking a knuckle under Dean’s chin and lifting his head a little. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Dean asserted, letting Michael shift his hand until the Omega cradled Dean’s cheek. “Eat up. I’ll tell you in a bit.”

“Can’t you tell me now? You’re freaking me out a little. Why are you Tertiary at dinner? Are you falling? Is it time?”

“Um, it’s kinda along those lines.” Dean caught Cas watching, but the Alpha didn’t interrupt, and no one else at the table paid them any mind. He ate a little. Michael mirrored him, waiting on a response but giving up when Dean seemed reticent to continue.

“Dean? Please tell me. It’s been a shitty day, and I’m not in the mood for a long wait. If you’re upset with me, I need you to tell me what’s wrong. What’d I do now?”

“Damn, Michael. Stop jumping to conclusions. I’m not mad at you. I want to talk about how to give your wolf more than it’s getting from mine. Eat your dinner. I’m not discussing this here.” Dean layered his alpha over his wolf and shut Michael’s protests down. Michael frowned at his mate, then turned to glance down the table at April. She wasn’t paying him any attention. April was caught up in listening to Kali describe a new commission to design all of the clothing for a high society wedding, and the two women pulled only Sarah in with them. They ignored all the men.

Michael looked back to Dean and realized his mate had a water glass where his beer bottle usually sat. “I’m planning on spending tonight with Pete, alpha,” he clarified, reading the implications.

“I know,” Dean replied. “You can still do that. I’m sleeping with Cas tonight. I won’t take your whole evening. But we need to hash something out, you and I. It won’t take long, and it won’t hurt. I swear, man. Eat. And hold onto that urge to hit something. We can do that real quick too, if you want to.”

Michael set his fork down with a thud. “You talked to Jody.”

“You know I did,” Dean answered softly. “You were there when I made that appointment. And what are you mad about? This is a _good_ thing. You get me on my knees more. What’s not to like?”

Michael rolled his eyes, set his jaw, and picked his fork back up, eating mechanically.

“Oh, brother,” grumbled Dean, kicking the tension up a notch. “You’re going to kick up a fuss because it was someone else’s idea? Damnit, Michael…”

“I _hate_ to be ‘managed’, Dean. You think you and Jody can stuff scenes down my wolf’s throat until it’s so full it can’t walk and then send me into my training classes docile enough not to make waves. I don’t want to be force fed.”

“Maybe you should’ve thought of that when Jody warned you off nibbling on clients the first twelve times. You’re acting like a child,” Dean accused. “You would be all over the idea if it was yours instead of Jody’s. But you know what? You don’t wanna do it? Fine. You figure out a better way to keep your wolf outta your work, and I’ll sign off on it. You don’t need to do me any favors, Michael. Fuck this.” Dean tipped his chair over in his haste to remove himself, and he stalked out of the dining room.

“Goddamnit,” Michael muttered as he watched Dean leave. “That’s not what I meant, alpha. I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it. Jesus, I told you I was pissy.”

“Michael, you’re excused,” Castiel told him without further instruction, and Michael took the excuse to bolt after his mate.

“Dean, wait!” Michael caught up to him in the foyer.

“Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?” Dean asked him, furious and red-eyed. “It took me months to win back to holding onto my alpha. Now I’m supposed to reverse track and take it all back, and be Tertiary all the fucking time? And fine, man, I can do that if it’s what you need from me, but don’t act like a petulant spoiled asshole brat when you get precisely what you want without having to throw down and win a brawl to get it! What do you want from me, Michael? Don’t pretend you don’t want me on my fucking knees! _Goddamnit!_ Why do we have to play these stupid games?”

Michael wiped his face with a hand, blushing as the accusation struck home and stuck. “I want to _earn_ it though, alpha. I want it to mean something. My wolf isn’t interested in being _fed._ It wants to hunt. I wanna be a part of bringing you back topside when you fall, and I know you’re close. But you’re planning on roleplaying with me and then letting Cas do all the real heavy lifting. Come on, Dean! I’m your mate! Don’t hand feed me scraps and then give everything that actually matters to him!”

“I need him, Michael,” Dean confessed. “I can’t get through a fall without him.”

“I know that,” Michael lobbed back, closing the distance between them. “But please say you need me too. Dean, please. Don’t do this without me. Please.”

“I never had any plan to do it without you, man. That was you jumping to conclusions again. Since I’ve known you, have I ever had a fall that you didn’t play a crucial role in? Michael, man, you’re a part of me. I’m not doing anything without you.”

“Then what’s this roleplay bullshit about?”

“Who said it was going to be a roleplay?” Dean countered. “And besides, I use roleplay all the time with Cas. We settle all kinds of little imbalances that way.”

“Spare me the details of your kinky love life with him, alpha.”

Dean sighed. “Here’s the deal, Michael. If your wolf was getting all that it needed from me at home, you wouldn’t be tempted to turn professional interactions into inappropriate contact. There’s only one way to fix that unless you wanna start signing up to scene at the Facility with Adam. I’m down to let you if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want _Adam_,” Michael growled.

“Good,” Dean responded. “Then stop throwing shit at the walls like a damn monkey and take the offer, damnit!”

Michael’s nostrils flared and his eyes turned golden. “You don’t decide this for me, Dean. _I_ decide! You obey!”

Dean’s wolf caught the change of wind direction and speed, and it hunkered low onto its haunches, watching for a cue. Dean’s alpha spotted the way into the headspaces he was targeting as it evolved, and it stepped back into the shadows, giving over to his brat. Michael’s golden eyes marked heightened arousal, not a Secondary mindset, and Dean lowered his body in readiness. There was real anger funneling through to Michael’s wolf, not a roleplay, but Dean was ready. The Omega had taken the bait and bolted with it.

Michael went on. 

“I don’t need you and your little team of betas charting out feeding sessions for me. This is between me and you, Dean. Not Jody! Fuck Jody!”

“I’m sorry, Sir,” Dean gulped. His knees wobbled slightly, wanting to give way, but he needed a cue from his Dom first.

“You’re about to be,” Michael growled at him. Michael turned on his heel and left Dean standing by the staircase. He didn’t summon his mate, but Dean leapt to follow him anyway. He jogged down the back stairs in Michael’s wake, keeping up at a run.

“Sir?” Dean pressed. “Does this mean you like my idea? Are we scening after all? Sir?”

“Shut up, Dean.” Michael held the playroom door wide and gestured. “Get inside and strip. And wipe that smile off your face.”

“Yes!” Dean enthused, raising his hand for a high five as he passed his mate, a high five that Michael didn’t return.

“You’re not cute, Dean. You’re a brat. And I’m not laughing. You want a Dom? You got one. Get your clothes off and climb up in the swing.” Michael pointed.

Dean grinned at him and tossed his clothes in a heap on the floor, setting the swing to swaying heartily in his enthusiasm.

“Keep it up, Submissive,” Michael warned. “It makes no difference to me if your night with _him_ is spoiled or not.”

“Bring it on, Sir,” Dean challenged, and Michael responded. He tangled the fingers of one hand in the webbing, and he swatted his mate several times with his hand through the gaping back of the chair where it left its occupant’s backside accessible before stopping to stare at the pink blush Dean’s backside already sported.

“Who did this?”

“Alpha took exception to being mocked earlier this evening,” Dean admitted shamelessly, craning his head around to try to catch a look and setting the swing to a slow rotation. Michael held it in place.

“God_damnit!!_” Michael shouted. His voice echoed against the high ceiling, and Dean smirked over his shoulder.

“He’s not going to be asking you for permission anymore, Sir. You get that, right? He said you and he had a ‘Come-to-Jesus’ and things were going to change. Does that piss you off too, Michael? Feel like doing something about it? Come on, Omega! Hit me! Like you mean it this time!” Dean’s goading made Michael snarl and slap down a hard ten to his bare ass, but ten swats with an Omega’s hand was nothing to Dean Winchester, and giving him what he asked for wasn’t satisfying to Michael in the least.

Michael changed course. He left Dean swinging and collected a few items. Coming back with a scowl on his face, Michael tied Dean’s wrists to the wooden dowel at the top of the swing, far apart to keep him stretched. Dean grinned as he held still for the binding. Michael used a fine, smooth rope to fix Dean’s thighs to the outer supports of the chair, forcing him wide open and staking the swing in place to halt its motion. But Dean’s mood darkened instantly when Michael untangled Dean’s boxer briefs from his jeans and stalked back to confront his brat with them in his hand, wagging them in threat. Into Dean’s bratty mouth, Michael shoved Dean’s underwear and then he tied a gag around the back of his head to hold them in place. Dean shouted wordlessly, feeding the scent of anger in the room as he struggled fruitlessly and letting his brat’s temper into the stew. 

Now they were both mad.

Dean’s brat did _not_ like being gagged.

Dean fought when Michael shoved lubed fingers up his ass and fucked him harshly. He struggled and shouted a muffled protest even louder when Michael rolled the automatic fucking machine up behind him and affixed a narrow dildo to the end. Dean tugged at his restraints to get the swing moving, but Michael had it anchored to the robot and to the outer supports, and Dean’s ass had no choice but to accept the intrusion.

Fucked by a robot was _not_ what Dean wanted, and he fought, bruising his wrists and thighs in the process.

The dildo hurt, even at its narrow gauge and even at a minimal depth. Dean was tension in every muscle, and it hurt. Anger shifted rapidly to outrage, and he promised Michael torment once the ropes were removed.

Michael stared coldly at him, watching from the front as the alpha’s body jolted with the motion of the robotic machine. Dean’s cock shifted loosely with the swaying of the chair, uninterested.

“You don’t like that?” Michael mused, eyeing Dean’s soft dick. “I thought you wanted a Dominant _wolf_. No? You’d rather be pampered? Stroked with a feather? You want a hot bath and chilled champagne?”

“Mmmphmmgrm!” Dean shouted at him, eyes a blazing red.

“I don’t want to be _FED,_ Dean!” Michael clarified, and Dean’s eyes widened. “You don’t control me, _alpha!_ What? You thought we could do a little light impact play before bedtime and call it a success? Have you forgotten what I’m like when you push me toward something I don’t want?”

Dean struggled and grunted as the fucking machine worked tirelessly behind him. It was beginning to wear, needing more lubricant, the friction a harsh burn.

Michael disappeared out of Dean’s field of view and after a moment, the glide smoothed out as Michael filled the reservoir in the machine that fed a constant supply of silken lube through tiny ports in the dildo’s tip. Dean huffed through his nose, sucking deeply, attempting to draw in enough air with his mouth full of used underwear. His fists tightened on the bar over his head as Michael shifted the robot closer, increasing its depth.

Dean whimpered pathetically. His thighs burned with the ties holding him open, and his shoulders burned with tension. Coming back around front, Michael set another heavy machine to a rhythmic sucking right in front of Dean, the same mechanism that worked April’s breast pump. The alpha shook his head frantically and flexed the muscles of his groin to try to close the gap between his thighs, but it was no good, and his beloved fucking mate slipped the cushioned suction hose over his dick, holding it in place until it anchored and held on its own, sucked right up tight to Dean’s knot and stretching to accommodate. The soft repetitive sound of the motor sequencing through suck and release, suck and release, filled the high space in counterpoint to the cycling sound of the machine behind him.

Dean struggled again, sending rage through both Mating-bonds.

“There now. That’s all I wanted to say,” Michael chirped happily. “I feel so much better for getting that off my chest. Thank you for talking it through with me, Dean. I believe I’m ready to eat dinner now. You coming? No? Not yet?” Michael broke a little at his own pun, smiling in spite of himself, but he heeled backward toward the door.

Dean’s eyes flew wide, and he shook his head violently, starting up another desperate round of grunts and muffled shouts through his gag. His cock began to respond to the suction, and his asshole loosened in spite of his efforts, but surely Michael wasn’t going to leave him here.

Surely not.

“I’ll save you some brats in case you’re hungry later,” Michael offered.

The overhead light flipped off and Michael let the door slam behind him.

Dean screamed into his gag in frustration, sending Michael obtuse promises through their shared links. At length, when his mate didn’t return, Dean realized he was in this for real, and he settled down to breathe through it. His body was responding, and it fed his temper all the more.

Michael would have to release him eventually. That fucker didn’t know who he was dealing with. A fucking machine? Fine. A cock-sucking robot? Good. Bring it. Dean could take it.

Dean couldn’t take it.

His ass ached, every nerve on fire. His cock had nothing left to give. It was only barely pulling enough suction to keep the hose attachment from slipping off entirely now that his erection had faded, but Dean had given up trying to shift his hips enough to loosen it. It continued to suckle mechanically at his over sensitized flesh.

He was sweating and spent, exhausted and shaking, and he concentrated on sending the word, _‘UNCLE’_ through to his mate in every language he knew. He sent remorse, defeat, submission, and apology in equal measure, but it wasn’t until Dean gave up trying to hail Michael and instead, dropped his head and wept that the door cracked open again.

Dean’s soft crying turned hard and ugly as he realized Michael was back. Michael untied the gag and pulled the wet fabric out of his mate’s mouth. Dean hiccupped out a heartfelt apology as the blasted machine at his groin finally fell silent. The hose slipped off on its own without suction behind it. And then the rhythmic spearing from behind slowed to a grind and disappeared altogether, leaving Dean’s entrance feeling cold, raw, wet, and stretched.

Gentle hands at his wrists loosened and freed his arms followed by the untying of both of his thighs at the same time. Dean searched through teary eyes and let his head roll to the side. Cas knelt at his right side, inspecting the bruises that circled his thigh while Michael picked at the knot securing the rope to the outer frame of the swing. Untying Dean’s thighs was a matter of pulling a quick-release loop, but apparently, Michael had used a harsher knot on the swing itself. He frowned in concentration and then abandoned it to kneel in front of Dean, leaving the knot for later.

Dean had lost control of his crying. He searched Michael’s face with eyes too blurry to see clearly, and he shuddered violently as he reached for his mate. Having Castiel at his shoulder felt amazing, all told. They were both here, focused on Dean. 

“Shh, shh. Dean, I’m here. Shh,” Michael cooed, wrapping his hands around Dean’s hips. “You did it, baby. You did so well.” Michael eased Dean into leaning forward so that he toppled out of the swing and into Michael’s lap. His sobbing picked up, earning him a huff of a laugh from Michael. “Shh, alpha, baby, you’re all right.”

Dean needed to apologize, but he couldn’t get the words out around the painful constrictions of his throat as weeping grunts tore painfully out of him. He leaned into Michael’s chest and cried. He felt Cas lift his wrists and look them over. He heard Cas instruct April to fetch a couple of ice packs. Michael held a water bottle up to Dean’s lips and eased small sips into his mouth.

“You’re all right, Dean. Shh. I’m here. Cas is here. You’re not hurt. Can you tell me why you’re crying? Talk to me, Dean.”

“’T’s too m-much, Sir,” Dean said haltingly.

“What’s too much, baby?” Michael asked, rocking him. Dean tucked his face into Michael’s chest, feeling the awful throbbing sobs begin to slow. Dean felt Cas take his arm and wrap a cool pack around his wrist, securing it with a loose strap. Cas had to fumble awkwardly for his right arm, snugged as it was up by Michael’s chest. Once the cool band was in place on both wrists, Cas nudged Dean into turning his back to his mate, arranging him in Michael’s lap to lean back and wallow. Michael wrapped his arms around Dean’s torso and ran fingers through his hair while Castiel doctored Dean’s thighs.

“Dean? Honey, what’s too much? The machines?”

Dean shook his head.

“You didn’t think I’d really left you, did you? You know I was watching over you the whole time.”

Dean nodded and snuggled his face to the side, nuzzling. “Y-yeah. I sa-aw you.”

“Good boy,” Michael praised. “Sip some more water for me.”

Dean accepted the bottle when Michael tipped it up. As he sipped, Michael reminded him. “What was too much, alpha?”

“I wanted to be g-ood for you, Mi-Michael. Wanted to hold ou-out. But it was too much. I f-failed.”

Michael chuckled, shaking Dean’s body with his belly. “No, love. You were amazing. You did so well.”

“I did?” Dean looked up at him, and he found the expression on Michael’s face matched the zing in his bonds. Michael was fiercely proud.

“You did,” the Omega confirmed. “But it’s bedtime now. Let’s get up and get you to bed.” Michael leaned forward to get his feet under him, letting Cas help him haul Dean to his feet. They hoisted him up and each wrapped an arm around him. Slowly they made their way up the stairs, the two Doms practically carrying Dean between them, and Dean was reminded of a night ages ago when he needed help up the stairs after a far harsher confrontation with Castiel’s angry wolf.

Maybe one day Dean would get smart enough to stop pissing off psychopathic wolves who have access to make him ache.

“Michael?”

“Yes, Dean?”

“Man, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to hand feed you like that. That was stupid.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, love. Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Michael suggested. He eased through the master bedroom first and helped Dean stumble through after him.

“I can walk, fellas,” Dean mumbled weakly as they stumbled toward the bed.

Michael let Cas deposit Dean gingerly on the comforter. Cas lifted Dean’s legs up onto the bed for him and applied another layer of ointment to his inner thighs. Cas looked carefully into Dean’s eyes then smiled and patted his cheek paternally.

“Michael,” Cas said turning around. “I’m going to take a shower. Please stay with Dean until I’m back, and then you may go to April. She’s waiting for you, I believe.”

“Yes, Alpha. I need to talk to him a little yet anyway.”

“Very good, Michael. You did well tonight. I expect your report on my desk by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Once he was gone, Michael stretched out on the bed beside his mate. Dean rolled in to lean against him. He wrapped an arm over Michael’s ribs and tugged. 

“I’m right here, Dean. God, you blew me away tonight. I haven’t felt a rush like that in ages. I had no idea you could do that. Do you know you were in there for an hour and a half? Holy shit, you’re amazing.”

“I live to serve, sir,” Dean said sleepily, coming slowly back to himself. “I hope it was worth it.”

“Oh, it was worth it,” Michael assured him. “You talk about sending me to clinicals with a full belly. That was a whole banquet. I’m stuffed.”

Dean snickered and hid his blush in Michael’s chest again. “Stop it,” he whined.

“Look, alpha,” Michael said, losing the teasing tone. “That was a shitty thing to do to you without talking it over first. You know you didn’t do anything wrong, don’t you? You didn’t deserve to be punished that way. That wasn’t what it was about.”

Dean grew thoughtful and still, plied out along his mate’s body and stroking the Omega’s long lines with his fingertips. “I don’t feel punished,” he observed. “I feel reined in and secured fast. That’s a good feeling, sir. Maybe it didn’t go the way we usually play, but you nailed me…in more ways than literal. You played it right, Michael. I’m really proud of you.”

Michael took stock of Dean’s expression as he rifled brazenly through his Sub’s head. “I know you’re going to point out that we never lost touch with each other, and that we both know I would’ve kicked the door down if you needed me to. But the truth is, I set you hurting without explaining what I was doing first. I took your safeword from you, and I need to know for sure what you’re thinking. I can tell what you feel, but I need to know your mind. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, Michael. You’re finally really getting it, baby. _That’s_ the kind of bullshit I need from you. So if you’re good, man, I’m floating.”

“Even if it wasn’t a roleplay?” Michael questioned carefully. “I was pretty pissed at you.”

“Especially since it wasn’t a roleplay,” Dean confirmed stoutly. He jostled himself up onto his elbow with a groan. “You remember I said back before you ever started your training, if I’m being a dick to you, that’s the brat, and the only response that makes sense is to smack it down hard? And you did, and it was awesome! It was a roleplay in all the senses that keep us both safe, man. You weren’t mad at me. You were mad at the circumstances you have to live by. You caught my pitch and ran with it, and you did it like a veteran. My mate is a god, Michael.”

Michael eased over and kissed Dean’s lips. “Here, mate-of-the-gods, finish your water.”

Dean lay on his back and put his hands behind his head, holding Michael’s eye and opening his mouth.

“Oh, really?” Michael laughed. “Here in Castiel’s bed? If you spill, it’s on you.”

Dean nodded and winked. Michael sat upright, aiming the bottle carefully as he got the flow going straight into Dean’s open mouth. Michael held steady as Dean swallowed every now and then without closing his lips. It was a practiced technique, and Dean was proficient.

“Damn, that’s hot. Makes me wanna fuck your mouth,” Michael praised, tipping the last drops into Dean’s mouth. Instead of fucking, Michael kissed him. He sent Dean heat and gratitude and praise, and Dean basked.

“It should go without saying,” Castiel said emerging from the bathroom rubbing a towel over his head. “That much as Michael needs his wolf well-nourished… You’ll note I didn’t say _fed… _ We cannot do scenes of this magnitude on a daily basis. Therefore, I expect both of you to put your thinking caps on and come up with some ideas to keep the ball rolling without exhausting our adorable mutual Sub. Dean, my Pet. Are you ready for me?”

Dean gaped. “Ready for you? I thought I was going to bed.”

Michael kissed the top of Dean’s head and excused himself quietly, slipping out without another word. 

“You are in bed,” Cas pointed out. “And you and I had plans tonight.”

“But you just had to carry me up the stairs! I came five times!”

Cas shook his head with a grin that dissolved into a serious expression. “Your decision to rile your mate until he slapped you down doesn’t alter my plans, Pet. The point of the evening, as I already explained, was to prove to you that you have enough in your tank for both of us. And we hardly had to carry you up the stairs. You milked that. As to your orgasm count, you exaggerate. Be honest.”

“Fine. I’m too old for a fiver in under three hours,” Dean admitted churlishly. “But it was a solid three and a couple of world class aftershocks.”

“It was two,” Cas corrected. “There’s a difference between a full orgasm and a mechanically induced harmonic. And I believe your penis has experienced enough direct stimulation tonight anyway, regardless of the count.”

“But you’re still going to tear up my ass,” Dean concluded.

“Yes, I am. Scoot to the end of the bed.”

Dean groaned, but he complied.

“I’m never going to be able to resist your ass when it’s gaping like this,” Cas observed. He lifted Dean’s right leg by the ankle and ran harsh, probing fingers over the lube-slicked pucker, soft and swollen. “It’s erotic, my Pet. You’re all my fantasies incarnate.”

Dean grimaced at the pain. Friction had worn him raw, and intrusion had left him swollen. Castiel’s touch was a harsh, intemperate assault, and Dean writhed.

“Be still.”

“Sir!”

“It hurts?” Cas asked in the voice of his wolf.

Dean’s lips pressed stubbornly together, unwilling to admit his flesh might have limits, and he glared down the length of his body.

“Mmm,” Castiel acknowledged. “Good. Roll over.”

Dean took to his belly, and he stretched up to wrap his hands in the headboard. Castiel squatted down at the end of the bed and fixed his teeth into the back of Dean’s left thigh. Dean’s eyes flew wide, and sweat erupted from everywhere as the Dom bit down. Dean screamed, suffuse with adrenalin and endorphins, tightening every muscle until he ached. Cas held him in his teeth, and he rammed both thumbs into Dean’s entrance, forcing the clenching muscles wide.

Dean cried out again after his breath ran out. He ducked his head into the bedding and sobbed at the sensations of being assaulted from behind. His nerves pleaded for him to defend himself, but he locked his core and remained prostrate on the bed. With supreme effort, Dean spread his right leg further apart, opening himself all the more to his attacker, and he felt Castiel swoon from inside his own head. Jaws that remained clamped around the meat of his thigh began a hungry chewing as if the Dom’s appetite was stoked enough to actually attempt consuming his prey.

Dean whimpered.

That was going to be one hell of a bruise.

Cas released him. Immediately, Dean felt tongue and teeth at his hole, nipping harshly and digging deep between the spread of his thumbs. Dean panted. He wanted to respond, but his cock was out for the count. Castiel knew how to play with his toy though, and Dean’s fingers and toes tingled in anticipation.

From behind him, Cas supported Dean’s knees and legs one by one until he was up and supported on the bed in a presentation position, arms still reaching out above him, totally at Castiel’s mercy.

His balls hung heavy between his legs, a delectable temptation that Cas went for as soon as they were free of the bed. Cas sucked them into his mouth one at a time, sucking and tonguing and rolling and licking. Dean sobbed and shivered. Cas’ thumbs returned to his ass as he let Dean’s balls go. They alternated stretching and thrusting, sometimes together and sometimes fluctuating.

Dean rolled his forehead across the comforter, searching for the doorway into his sense of other-worldly floating. 

Cas pulled one thumb out and reached between Dean’s legs to pull his cock backward. He licked at the tip, coaxing and sucking just the head, and Dean’s breathing lost all regularity. He huffed and panted. His thighs trembled.

What happened to ‘no more direct stimulation’, the fucking liar?

Cas was reveling in Dean’s overexertion, in his overwhelmed, over sensitized overuse. He chuckled at Dean’s discomfort and applied himself to find every touch that made Dean’s feet sweat where his toes curled in the open air. Cas played with his exhausted genitals, with his sore and puffy hole, with the pink, sunburned meat of his ass, biting and squeezing and tugging and slapping until he felt Dean float away in his head.

Dean’s vocalizations never paused. He whimpered and moaned, rocking back and flinching away. And Castiel’s brutal wolf teased him mercilessly the whole time.

Dean was nearing the kind of whimpering that would soon turn into hiccups when Cas finally stepped back and stood up, unbuckling his belt. He stripped swiftly, noting that Dean had grown completely still in anticipation. His back barely moved with suspended breathing. In their heads, they were both circling, both inhabiting places in their minds that they intentionally avoided during the daytime.

Here, alone in the brightly lit bedroom they shared, each of them embraced in himself and his partner what he often found shameful when forced to consider its depths alone in the dark with no company but his own insecurities. Castiel was a heartless brute. Dean was a desperate reprobate in need of staking down. But they filled each other’s vacuums. It didn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Castiel watched himself press in, watched Dean’s muscles expand as the Sub bore down against the intrusion, opening himself wide. Cas slipped right in, and he closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, pressing forward until he was buried just short of his knot. He held there, and he breathed. His hands wrapped Dean’s hipbones where his flesh doubled with the bend of his body, making perfect hand holds for a powerful grasp.

Cas took his time finding his grip, letting his Sub anticipate why he needed a hold he was sure of. Dean’s breath hitched a couple of times, expecting this to hurt.

And it did hurt.

Cas drew back slowly, held still with the head of his cock planted in the swollen embrace of Dean’s weary body, and then he snapped his hips forward with a loud grunt, and he set to taking hold and staking his claim. His fingers sweated against their hold, but he only gripped tighter, and he fucked hard, fast, hurtful, and vicious, slapping against Dean’s ass at each thrust hard enough to spark the sting back up.

Dean let go of the headboard rails. He let go with every muscle, becoming a ragdoll in the mouth of a bulldog. His body jolted with the tide of Castiel’s wolf’s furious onslaught, and he flew.

Sweat flew from the tips of Castiel’s hair and dribbled down his throat to coat his chest. He surged forward, following the call of his wolf to subsume his Sub, setting first one knee up on the bed and then the other. He fell to the pull of gravity over Dean’s back, and he rucked up into him in possessive rage, covering his entire body as he rutted, adding everything he could to make Dean’s pain sing inside their bonds.

Castiel’s knot slipped in on a particularly hard thrust, but the wolf was possessed, and he tugged it right back out, only to shove it back in again, an exclamation point on his Claim. Dean’s abused rim stretched and rolled under the assault. He bit into his own arm at the burn, forcing himself to take what the wolf demanded he endure. It hurt in a way the two rarely reached for, in a way they both craved only once in a great while, and while a part of Dean felt the call to push free and make a run for it, his deepest urges basked in the abuse. He was soaring again, flying above the reach of clouds and sunshine, up in the outer reaches where physicality ceased to exist and all that there was was sensation and intent.

Castiel thrust so hard that Dean’s knees gave way, and he collapsed onto the bed with the Alpha’s knot buried inside him. He felt the throb within his gut as the man orgasmed, and he felt sharp teeth sink into his sweaty shoulder and break through to leave a painful, stinging mark of ownership that bled fresh and clean and righteous.

A bright new Claim snapped hard, and Dean’s butt muscles spasmed as if he’d been struck physically. Chill bumps erupted up and down his body. He began to shake uncontrollably in relief and bliss and exhaustion.

He wept a cathartic release into the bed, and he eased beneath the covering protective claim of his Alpha.

Cas let go of his shoulder and kissed the spot he’d bitten. He licked slowly to thwart the flow of blood. It wouldn’t bleed for long. Dean took a deep breath and let it go. Without opening his eyes, he splayed the fingers of his left hand wide, and Cas threaded his own between Dean’s, squeezing.

“I love you more than I can ever convey, Dean Winchester,” Cas mumbled tiredly. “What you give to me, what you _keep_ giving, is more than I ever deserved.”

“Love you too, Alpha,” Dean grated. His voice was trashed. His body was ruined. 

For now.

He would heal of course. All the damage was physical, and Dean had never shied away from physical damage. In his soul, where he’d always felt so broken he didn’t seem entirely human, the holes felt a little bit smaller tonight. He sniffled loudly and turned his head to the side, seeking his husband in his peripheral vision. Cas kissed his temple. They lay still, each nestling into the rhythm of the other. They held hands, and they matched breathing, and they let the hormones settle.

“Love you too,” Dean repeatedly sleepily.

He was asleep before Castiel untied, and he slept through all the work that went into getting him and his bedding back up to snuff to sleep the remainder of the night in Castiel’s arms.

He still had a fall coming. But maybe they could successfully shepherd the devastation to a time and place of safety, of convenience. Cas cinched him tightly into his chest and lay awake long into the night, thinking about frailty versus strength and vulnerabilities versus weaknesses.

The baby monitor didn’t crackle with sound all night long, and eventually Castiel slept too, his nose pressed against the back of Dean’s neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is chapter 2 of 4 from what was a wild, nonstop, keyboard-mashing frenzy that dumped something like 50K words into my laptop all at once in one long chapter. I split the mess into 4 chapters, and I'll be posting them at about one week intervals. I was inspired (maybe triggered is a better word) to throw my life on hold and lose myself in the words on my screen after a comment that it's been disappointing to keep having Dean/Michael scenes fleshed out in their entirety where the Cas/Dean scenes get short-scripted to simple before and after cuts. I wanted to believe that wasn't true, and I sat down to write until I reached the scene I felt was imminent, only to have my muse send other important scenes out first. For a fic that stands firmly within its mission statement as being primarily destiel, I have to concede that I do actually skip the destiel smut on a regular basis. The reason for that, upon reflection, is pretty simple. While my imagination can send me what those scenes need to _feel_ like, I often fall short on being able to render that feeling in full. Michael/Dean, I can do, no problem, but the intensity and that 'skirting right along the edge of danger' sense that I need for Cas/Dean is way harder to evoke than it seems like it would be.
> 
> Since I do this for fun and my own form of therapy, taking on a challenge like that would turn it into work, and that's not going to happen. The moment it stops being fun is the moment I throw it in altogether.
> 
> That said, I liked writing this section. A lot. I hope you enjoyed it too.


	7. Thursday, December 20, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> April's hitting rock bottom, and she's not crying wolf this time. Maybe her new boyfriend can give her a bit of a lift. Charlie plays catalyst - a role that Charlie is ideally suited for.
> 
> 3rd chapter of 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this posting finds the Pack well and safe. I hope you're all leaning on each other. I hope you're coping in a way that feeds your soul. To those who struggle with the anxiety of uncertainty and upheaval, I send out the tightest hugs I can. Reach out when you need someone's hand. We're going to see each other through this.
> 
> For me, I'm ostriching my ass off, burying myself in fantasy worlds because there's not a lot else I can do, and this brings me solace.
> 
> To this chapter: I skipped a few days. For those who wanted to see Dean limping around sadly after his hard night, yeah, I skipped that. It happened. That was Monday. This is Thursday. He's mostly recovered. Alphas heal fast. Assume he was coddled a bit and tweaked a bit and feels pretty damn good about how he handled what they threw at him.
> 
> Enjoy.

Michael found her in the kitchen, seasoning a tray of chicken thighs. She had her hair up in an untidy pile on top of her head, and her feet were bare, a long sweatshirt of Michael’s her only clothing.

“Hey, beautiful,” he flirted, wrapping her up from behind and nuzzling the side of her neck to mesh their scents. “Got a few minutes? Pups are all napping. We could… …you know…”

April let her head fall lazily backward to land on his shoulder, and she closed her eyes to his touch. “No, I can’t,” she answered quietly. “I need to shower and get back to the nursery. They’re going to be waking up any minute, and everyone else is out.”

April’s voice sounded exhausted beyond its usual breaking point. Her body felt heavy against Michael’s chest, but she lifted her head and went back to work. He tried to turn her, but she resisted, continuing to sprinkle seasoning on the chicken pieces despite his efforts.

“Pete, are you all right? Didn’t you sleep last night? Did the extra naps over the week not help at all?”

“Yes! I slept,” she exhaled. “All I do is sleep, it feels like. And write shitty tunes. And wipe shitty butts. And pump my tits over and over and over. And whine. And fall short whenever anyone asks me for anything. Michael, I fucked up so bad.”

“Come on, sweetheart. You’re just tired. It’s not that bad.”

“I thought I could do this, but I can’t! I can’t take care of four pups and keep my music going at the same time! I can’t do it! I’m so fucking tired, no matter how much I sleep, and I’m hungry all the time, and I feel like there’s always more to do, more that _has_ to be done, and everyone’s always touching me, reaching for me, asking me for things I don’t have the energy to give, and I’m letting everyone down. Have you seen the pile of laundry by the washer? I haven’t walked my dog in over a week! And the worst part is I _asked_ for this! I swore I could handle it, but I had no idea what it would feel like! I can’t do it, Michael. But I _have_ to! I begged Cas to let me.”

“You don’t have to keep pushing when you’ve reached the end of your strength, April,” he told her firmly, finally succeeding in shifting her to face him. She had chicken slime on her fingers, and she held her hands out away from him. Her face pinched tightly closed, shutting her eyes and shutting him out.

“We have enough people in the house to give you the breaks you need,” he continued. “Why are you working on dinner when we have a cook? Pete, there’s no need for this. Come on. Wash your hands, and let’s get you showered. We’ll go from there. Don’t throw your career down the crapper just yet. The laundry isn’t going to catch fire if we don’t get to it this afternoon.”

She let him walk her to the sink, and she allowed him to wash her hands for her. “Tony’s not coming in today,” she explained.

“What? Why not?”

“Something personal came up. He didn’t say. I didn’t ask for specifics. Didn’t want to seem nosy.” She leaned into Michael’s side, her two arms pulled underneath his left arm as he scrubbed her hands clean.

“Pete, handling the staff’s days off is my job, not yours. Why didn’t you tell me he called in?” He held her hands under running water and rinsed them, patting them dry when he finished. She stood completely passive in his hands.

She shook her head sadly. “See what I mean?” she asked pathetically. “Everything I do is wrong these days.”

Michael laughed softly and kissed the side of her neck. “All right, little miss _’Woe-is-me’._ That’s enough of that. Let’s stop the pity party and go get you cleaned up and back on your feet. I declare a day of rest for my sweet Ozzie girlfriend.” He left her long enough to stretch a length of plastic over the tray and slip it into the refrigerator before he took her by the hand and guided her out of the kitchen. “How about a full body massage?” he offered.

“Kat’s got a runny nose again,” she told him. “Probably coming down with another cold or teething. She won’t nap long enough for that. Besides, you’re supposed to be studying. We had all day blocked for you to study.”

“Then we’ll call in the cavalry and get some help. Charlie can send us someone. She’s keeping us a call list.”

“Michael, I promised Cas I could handle them on my own today. I need to keep my promise.”

Michael passed through the garland-festooned parlor, rounded into the foyer with its gargantuan Christmas tree, and mounted the stairs with her hand in his, a reluctant Ozzie following him dolefully. “That’s not a promise he would ever hold you to, April. In fact, if you overdo it and put yourself at risk of a fall, he’ll be pissed that you didn’t ask for help. Come on. Shower and nap. No arguments.”

“Damnit, I’m not four!” she said, suddenly staunch. She tugged her hand out of his and refused to climb the stairs any further.

Michael ignored her protest. He slipped back down to her level and scooped her up onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and trotted up the rest of the stairs with her fists beating against his back. She had no traction against him physically. He was far stronger, and emotionally she was drained beyond any capacity to manipulate him to her preference. She had no defense that would work, and that truth added frustration to the weight across her shoulders. All she could do was flail fruitlessly and let him manhandle her up to her own room. He didn’t understand. April had begged her mate for this weight, and she _had_ to prove she could handle it. She HAD to.

Michael leaned over and let her slide off his shoulder onto her bed. Her fluffy throw pillows bounced as she landed. He fixed her with a hard look from his wolf, the same one he used on Alex when the pup tried to pull the screen off their fireplace. “I know you aren’t four, Pete. But you’re too tired and overworked to pretend you can keep going without a break, and you’re in no condition to make that choice. I’m not asking. I’m telling. You leave Kat’s runny nose to me.” Where Michael’s wolf wanted no part in his love affair with April, the beast was a hundred percent engaged in caring for her as a Packmate. Michael couldn’t have kept the wolf out if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t want to. She was clearly floundering for someone to direct her.

April appealed to him desperately. “No, you’re committed to spending the day in your books. You have a test. I promised Cas I could handle it without bothering you. Don’t you see? I _promised!_ He knew way back before we even planned to have pups that I couldn’t handle it, not and make a go of a career at the same time, and he let me talk him into it. I can’t let him see me like this!”

“That’s fine, Pete,” said Michael, bending at the waist to lean in close to her and touching her face. “We don’t have to let him see you like this. So let’s fix it before he comes home. Let me help. It’s just you and me at home right now, Pete. Trust me, huh?”

“You don’t understand,” she repeated plaintively. “A nap isn’t going to help. It’s cumulative. It’s all piling up on my shoulders, and I’m buckling under the weight. It’s too much. I can’t do it. I can’t keep this up. God, Michael, I’m so tired. But he’ll pull the plug on my new projects if he finds out, and I can’t let that happen. People are depending on me. We agreed just Tuesday to a whole new pathway, and I’m already buckling again. There’s so much left to do before Christmas. It’s their _first Christmas_. I can’t let them down! But I’m being pulled in two, just like Cas predicted, and I don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” Michael told her firmly. “We call in the damn cavalry, and we buy you some time to refuel. Love, you’re tired. That’s all this is. You’re spent. But you’ll feel better after a break. Maybe one nap isn’t enough to re-set you, but give me a chance to shuffle some things around, and I’ll get you more than that. Trust me, Pete. This isn’t your fault. You’re not failing. You’re doing an amazing job mothering those pups and showing the world your brilliance at the same time. You’re a terrific mate, an amazing musician, a damn good cook, and a sexy-as-fuck girlfriend, and you’re exhausted. Someone else can walk the damn dog. Someone else can wrap the presents. Let me take care of you for today. Take your clothes off. Shower first.”

April had no fight left in her. She nodded in defeat and began to shoulder out of Michael’s sweatshirt, releasing her hair at the same time. “I need to pump again after I clean up,” she said tiredly. “Before I can take a nap.”

Michael texted a short note to Charlie and nodded. “You go shower. I’ll get the pump set up.” He sent Dean a second text and then sent one to the Alpha. April dragged her weary body into the bathroom, leaving the door wide. The water started up just as Michael’s phone rang.

No surprise, it was Cas.

“She’s going to be fine, sir,” Michael told him. “But she needs to rest. I’m taking the pups while she naps, and then I’m going to see if Charlie can arrange babysitting for us this afternoon. That way, I can keep studying and April can make progress on her project.”

_”Do I need to come home, Michael?_

“No, sir. Please don’t. That would only add to her feelings of inadequacy. She’s trying so hard to balance it all and make you proud, and she’s doing it. If you come to her rescue today, it’ll send her a message that you don’t believe in her. She needs a break. That’s all. Let me and Charlie handle this afternoon. Please. She probably needs you tonight before bedtime, but she doesn’t need you dropping everything to rush home right now.”

_”We need to discuss the growing evidence that we should bring in professional assistance,”_ Castiel told Michael over the phone, and Michael frowned. _”It’s becoming patently clear that all four of us have too much on our plates to continue as we’ve been going. April’s taking the brunt of it, and she’s taking it personally as a failure of her own, when not a one of us would hold up any better under the strain. We haven’t hired any new staff since Tony joined us. It’s time, Michael.”_

“We don’t want a nanny raising our pups, Alpha. Pete and I are both in agreement about that.”

_”I’m open to alternatives, Omega,”_ Castiel replied tiredly. _”But I’m drawing a blank. What would you suggest? Should we continue asking both of you to wear yourselves to a frazzle? Parenting isn’t going to get any easier. Either someone has to give up the career they value and devote themselves to childrearing, or we need help. I don’t see any other way. I’m not putting them in daycare.”_

Michael couldn’t argue the logic. Cas and Dean put in intense hours at the Facility. Both of them came home spent more days than not. Michael’s commitment to his fledgling career had been rigorously tested from every direction, and he found himself determined to make a go of it, but that left him limited hours in each day too, no matter how he rearranged. Michael did most of his schoolwork and what classes he could in the evenings, leaving his mornings free to be a mother to his pups. But sometimes he encountered a pinch point where only a concerted effort and hours of studying could see him through the next test, the next practical – times like today.

As the only parent who truly worked from home, it was April who filled in the gaps. She was running herself ragged attempting to be everything to everyone, and it showed in the deep, dark wells around her young eyes. She and Michael had pulled out multiple stops to make Jess’ birthday celebration the night before a bigger production than usual, an effort to prove to Jess that she wasn’t the outsider she sometimes felt herself to be. That extra effort on top of the impending holiday that Dean was gung-ho to make memorable for their cadre of little ones was proving, not a straw on the camel’s back, but a lead weight. April was reeling.

No amount of trading off sleepless nights was making up the difference.

“Can we talk about it tonight, sir?” Michael asked with a hand rubbing through his hair.

_”Yes. Let’s.”_ There was resignation in the Alpha’s voice too. He didn’t particularly like the idea of farming his children out to a professional any more than Michael did, but he was also responsible for more than just the pups’ welfare. Cas had the wellbeing of the whole Pack to consider, so he had no choice but to face it from a practical standpoint. _“In the meantime, please see that April gets the break she needs. I thank you for taking care of her. I know that puts a strain on your studies.”_

“I’ll manage,” Michael told his Alpha. “If you can take the monsters tonight, I can get Dean to drill me on the anatomy test review while he wraps Christmas gifts.”

_”Monsters, Michael?”_

Michael chuckled. “Thanks, Cas. Don’t worry. I’ll look after her. She’s in good hands.”

_”I know she is.”_ There was a pause as Castiel considered, turning things over in his head. _”Her trip to Nashville is likely weighing heavily,”_ he offered. _”We need to try to allay those fears before she departs or she’ll fall hard. Cain isn’t equipped to break a hard fall by himself. If April’s experiencing feelings of guilt over needing to leave the pups to attend to her career, that might explain her evident need to overextend herself before she leaves.”_

“This isn’t her first solo trip away from them,” Michael pointed out with the phone trapped between his ear and his shoulder, noting the shower cutting off in the bathroom behind him. He lifted the breast pump from its spot on the floor and set it on her bedside table.

_”No, but it’s the first that extends to two full weeks,”_ Cas replied somberly. _”She’s never been away from them for this long before. We’ve tried to find some free time to schedule a visit home, and we can’t fit it in. There’s no choice but to grit our teeth and push through.”_

“I don’t like it, sir,” Michael said. April emerged from the steamy bathroom with a towel around her head. Michael opened the storage bin of clean pumping apparatus on her dresser and rummaged out two of each piece.

_”Nor do I,”_ Castiel admitted. _”But I promised her the freedom to go where her career takes her, and we always knew it would take her away from us on a regular basis like this. We’ve done everything we can do to protect her psyche from faltering, but we can’t shield her completely.”_

“Sir, let’s all discuss it tonight – all four of us. I gotta go. I need to get her pump set up.”

_“I’ll see you tonight, Michael. I love you a great deal, and I appreciate everything you’re doing.”_

“I love you too, sir. Don’t worry about us. I’ve got it under control.” He hung up and pocketed his phone, noting the blissful harmonic chime of a conditioned Omega compliance response sending waves of pleasure down his arms and legs, and he shivered slightly.

Michael still had reservations about Castiel’s increasingly tighter authority over his unruly Omega-Dominant, but though he often had a biting, snarky comeback on his tongue, the reaction from Michael’s own Omega gave him pause. Where his wolf and his Primary agreed that Cas was pushing his limits, Michael’s Omega purred with relief and snuggled right down into the structure Castiel built around it. It was such a strikingly powerful reaction, Michael pulled up in surprise and studied himself from the inside. And Castiel could clearly tell he was giving the new reality a chance to make sense to him. Cas had stepped back and allowed him time and space to digest it, offering a supportive comment now and then, but no further harsh lectures.

Change this rapid was exhausting, and Michael found more and more that he couldn’t drum up the motivation to rebel when his Omega was so content it practically purred inside his breast. He didn’t know if he was caving to the conditioning or if he was finally finding himself supported in the way his psyche demanded, but staying on Castiel’s good side both felt good and graced him with the stamina to be his better self for everyone else. He couldn’t argue with that.

Michael got April set up to fill two bottles, propping her up on pillows in her bed so that she could close her eyes and let the pump do all the work. He brought her a glass of milk and a plate of finger foods, and he told her to relax, promising to take care of the bottles and the pump once she’d run empty.

Michael studied the girl as they chatted, waiting for her milk supply to be drained for the time being. He searched her for evidence of deception. The exhaustion was real, and her outburst was classic for an Ozzie overwhelmed. But April’s mastermind manipulator had a track record of using her own overwhelmed state to pull sympathy and action from her packmates. Michael stroked her hair, tucking the stubborn loose strand behind her ear, and he searched her eyes. He didn’t think she was feigning anything. She seemed utterly wasted, barely able to string three words together, much less orchestrate a manipulative coup.

Of course, he couldn’t tell for sure. He had no pathway into her mind or her emotions.

April fell fast asleep with the apparatus propped up by folded towels at her waist, and Michael switched it off without waking her. She slept through his dismantling it all, cleaning her breasts with a warm cloth, and easing her down to lie flat, naked under the blankets. She murmured something unintelligible as he pulled the blanket up. She turned over to lay on her side with her cheek in her palm.

Michael kissed her temple affectionately, eased that strand of hair out of her face with one finger, and collected the milk she’d produced so he could run it down to the freezer.

He had his hands full on the staircase when Charlie appeared through the front door, letting herself in with a cheerful, “What’s up, bitch? The rescue party has arrived.”

“What good is a security team that allows random strangers to waltz straight in without even ringing the bell?” Michael groused, handing April’s snack dish and milk glass to her so he could more easily carry the rest.

“Ouch, Michael. I’m crushed,” Charlie joked. “And besides, ringing the bell would have woken the sleeping terrors in the nursery. You said you wanted them napping as long as possible. Holy fuck, Christmas exploded in here!”

“I didn’t mean for you to drop everything and come yourself,” Michael told her. He led her through to the kitchen and made short work of getting it all squared away. “I expected you to text me back and tell me who’s available.”

“I’m available,” she announced happily, spreading her arms wide in offer.

“Oh, shit,” Michael exclaimed. “I left the monitor in with Pete. Hold on. Stay here.” He dashed back out and up the stairs, leaving Charlie wandering slowly back toward the foyer in his wake, marveling at the expanse of glitter and twinkle that flocked every spare surface. She met him at the foot of the stairs and followed Michael into the parlor, listening while he filled her in. He described April’s condition and what he hoped Charlie would be able to offer them.

“Where’s Cain?” she asked, sliding off her chair to sit cross-legged on the floor once Michael had explained the crunch.

“He’s in Nashville getting everything ready for her. He says he can shorten her trip if he lays all the groundwork before she flies in. He’ll be back in a couple of days.” Michael followed Charlie onto the floor.

“How did Castiel not know she’s at the end of her stamina?” Charlie spoke with an air of covert caution.

“I’m not sure he missed it entirely,” Michael confessed. “I think he’s giving her space, feeling her limits out, maybe giving her room to fail. I’m not sure. It’s not like him to put her at real risk or set her up to fall disastrously, but I get the feeling he’s letting her make her way out onto a tightrope with his arms stretched out to catch her if she tumbles. I think he wants to give her a chance to find her balance mostly on her own, for as much as that’s possible for an Ozzie. I think he’s hoping she’ll reach out for help when she really needs it, and he’s giving her room to make that call for herself.”

The monitor crackled with the sound of a waking pup, and Michael switched it off as he stood up. Charlie went with him.

“But that leaves you picking up the broken pieces when she needs help,” Charlie observed. “Is that also part of his plan? He cinches you in until you’re tied to his hip, and he gives her slack enough to struggle?”

“Probably,” Michael answered on the stairs. “Although I doubt it’s that simple. I’ve still got more slack than Pete does. Maybe he’s trying to get us both to similar places. He’s been working hard to give us room to build a relationship of our own. Parenting as an Omega team is part of that. At least that’s how I see it. I don’t mind being her go-to when she’s struggling. Kinda the opposite, actually.”

Charlie shot him a knowing, ironic look, and Michael smiled in conspiratorial agreement.

In the nursery, they found Emma wide awake and playing silently with her stuffed bunny. Kat snuffled uncomfortably, rubbing her nose into the bedding and fussing. The boys were both still sound asleep. Michael gestured toward Idgie with his chin, and Charlie didn’t need telling twice. She cooed as she scooped the little pup into her arms, smiling wide, as Michael followed suit with Kat. Idgie reached for her nose with a matching grin.

“You’re a flirt,” Charlie told the pup seriously. “Charismatic little thing, isn’t she?” she posed to Michael who had Kat half naked on the changing table and was attempting to clean her bottom over her protests.

Michael smirked. “She’s just like Dean. Don’t ask me how that happened. We may need a paternity test when it’s all said and done. She looks like April, and she sparkles like Dean. Try to explain that one.”

“No, thank you,” Charlie laughed, teasing the pup by pretending to drop her, only to bend her knees and catch her again without ever truly letting her go. Emma shrieked with laughter. “I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole.” Charlie scrutinized Emma’s face, looking for a paternal tell. “There’s not actually a chance…?”

“No,” Michael chuckled. “She’s Alpha’s. You can see it every now and then when she frowns. She does this thing with one eyebrow that is a hundred percent Castiel. It’s fucking adorable. God, I hope she’s an alpha. Can you imagine a girl version of Cas and his Dom brow?”

Charlie laughed and made a face at Idgie which had them both cracking up. Michael finished changing Kat, wiped her nose, and set her on the floor to squall in offense. He took Emma from Charlie to give her the same attention.

Charlie plonked down onto her belly in front of the raven-haired grouch and transferred all of her face-making efforts into cheering Kat up. Kat batted at Charlie’s face testily and turned her back on the beta.

“Ooh,” Charlie observed playfully. “Someone’s in a bad mood.”

“Always,” Michael said patiently. “Don’t take it personally. Kathleen was born angry. It gets worse when she’s got a cold.”

“Aw,” Charlie commiserated. “I know, little bunny. I don’t like to feel shitty either. Poor thing.”

“You say that now,” Michael said. He lifted Emma up to sit on his hip. “Just wait until she’s screamed for two hours straight and tried to gouge your eyes out when you try to comfort her.”

Charlie grinned. “Your O-Pop is saying mean things about you, Kitty-Kat. Come here and let Auntie Charlie give hugs.”

Kat responded by crawling as far from Charlie as she could get in the nursery and sulking in a corner.

“See what I mean?” Michael laughed.

Charlie shrugged. “It’s fine. She’s not the first chick to give me the cold shoulder. I’ll live.” Standing up again and grinning when Emma reached for her, Charlie scooped the baby out of Michael’s arms and danced with her. “There are other fish in the sea, aren’t there, Idgie-girl?”

She caught Michael checking his watch, and she straightened up, eyes wide and helpful. “Oh, hey, I’m the babysitter. Right? You go on and do your stuff, your homework, whatever you’re supposed to be doing. Just tell me what to expect from these little rugrats and point me to where the cocaine and switchblades are so I can corrupt their little minds.”

“Corrupting them is Gabriel’s job,” Michael pointed out. He checked on his sleeping sons, leaving Kat pouting in the corner for the moment. “It’s really a two-person job, Charlie. I can’t leave you alone with them. Even with two of us, it’s likely to be a challenge if they all get wound up at once.”

“But you said April’s been taking care of them all by herself.” Charlie winced as Emma tangled her fingers in Charlie’s hair and pulled.

“She’s supposed to tap Eunice or Monica for help, but she never does. She thinks she should do it all alone. And she’s amazing with them. They respond to her voice, so she can rock two of them while she sings, and the other two go into a trance and listen. Nothing seems to faze her when she’s got them to herself. She’s like an octopus, always has one free hand for whoever needs it. No one expects you to be able to mimic that, Charlie.”

“Okay, so you leave them to me and Eunice. I know you’re supposed to be studying today, bestie. I’ve seen the schedule for your practicals, and they are coming right up. Your Alpha doesn’t need two overwhelmed Omegas.”

Michael made an uncomfortable face. “I don’t know. With Kat fighting a cold and as cranky as she is, Alex will be out of sorts too. He sponges off her emotions. He’s like a little mirror. And Jimmy is a snuggle-hog. He’ll want to be cuddled when he wakes up. They need to eat. They need some play time. I don’t feel right about leaving them.”

Charlie squared up, her coordinator hat firmly in place. “How about we go downstairs and start pulling their lunch together? I can keep the girls entertained when the fellas wake up, and you can run back up to fetch them. We’ll double-team for a while until all their little tummies are full, and then you leave me in the good hands of Grammy Eunice and go back to your books.” Charlie arranged Emma on the floor and handed her a toy. Emma ignored it and headed straight for her sister instead, joining her in the corner and babbling happily. Kat didn’t seem bothered, but she didn’t answer back either. “Michael, you wouldn’t have asked for help if you didn’t need it. Please trust me. I can do this.”

Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Michael found Jimmy beginning to squirm himself awake. “All right,” he conceded. “Let’s get the girls set up in their chairs in the kitchen and I’ll come back for Jimmy and Alex.”

Spending lunchtime with Charlie was a delight, and Michael lost track of the time. They fed the fab four, entertained them for a while as the adults munched on finger foods and leftover birthday cake, coddled the grouchy out of Kat who grew less cranky once she was fed, and packed them into a long stroller built for four for a walk in the sunshine, taking advantage of the rare warm day this late in the year.

April, back in Michael’s sweatshirt but looking far better this time around, found them down by the live oak where they’d stopped to offer bottles to the triplets and a cup of juice to Alex. The toddler ambled about clumsily at the edge of the blanket Michael had spread on the grass, tripping occasionally, but getting back up again and again to try once more, his cup clutched in a death grip in his fist. April swept him up playfully, inverted him to tickle his belly and smother him in kisses, then righted him again and set him back on his feet with a reddened face. Alex squealed with laughter and reached for his mommy. Settling on the blanket where she could pull an irritated Kat out of Michael’s lap to settle in her own, April let Alex fall awkwardly against her. She adroitly snuggled Kat into her lap and took over feeding her with a quick upward slide of her sweatshirt and bra while wrapping an affectionate arm around Alex, giving them both her warmth at the same time, and making it look effortless. Kat balked for a moment before snuggling in and taking April’s nipple into her mouth.

Michael had Jimmy in his lap as well, and he shuffled over a little now that he didn’t need to feed both of them. He smiled happily at April in welcome. “Feel better?”

“Loads better,” she agreed. Her eyes were still sunken and tight, but she did look far better than he’d found her. Charlie had Emma. The pup had both hands around the bottle and leaned back into Charlie, completely relaxed and trusting. Charlie turned her face up to catch the skittering sunbeams that danced between the windblown leaves above her, a look of peace and bliss on her face.

“Alex, stay near Mommy,” April chided gently as the pup pushed off and made a break for the lawn. He could hear Portia barking from her fenced run, and he pointed and took off at a fast toddle toward the dog. The incline proved too much, and Alex fell sprawling onto his hands and knees at a good clip. His expression registered shock for a moment, and then he wailed. He rolled onto his butt and sat bawling in the grass, clutching his sippy cup.

“Aww,” worried Charlie.

“He’s all right,” April replied. “Come on, Boo,” she called. “Come show Mommy.” Alex kicked his legs against the ground, winding himself up and growing furious that no one was running to his rescue. “We’ll go see Portia in a little while,” April soothed, calling out to him and holding her hand out in offer. In her lap, Kat snuffled and spat the nipple out as she began to cough, so April had to divert her attention to helping her daughter through the fit. Michael picked up smoothly where she left off with Alex.

“Come on, Ace,” he cajoled. “Come here and let me see where it hurts.” Alex responded by flinging himself backward to sprawl out on the lawn and move into full tantrum volume.

“Shouldn’t someone go check on him?” Charlie asked in dismay.

“He’s not hurt,” Michael assured her. “That’s not his hurt cry. That’s his attention-seeking cry, and it’s hard, but with four of them, we can’t reward tantrums. He can’t be allowed to demand this way. He gets as much attention as the triplets do. He’ll get plenty of snuggles, but right now, our hands are full, and he needs to learn to understand how he fits into the Pack.”

April snickered softly. “Submissives don’t make demands in Castiel’s Pack,” she commented dryly in a deep voice, sharing a private look with Michael. She settled Kat back in to finish her milk, sitting more upright than she had been to try to help her breathe and swallow better. “Alexander,” she called out, raising her voice to be heard over his cries. “Son, you can cry by yourself if you want to, or you can come back to the blanket and get cuddles from Mommy or O-Pop. Would you like to show Aunt Charlie your ‘owie’?”

Alex pounded his fists into the lawn, flinging his cup in his fury.

“Oh, he’s really mad,” Charlie observed.

Michael nodded. “Still wishing I’d left you to them all by yourself?”

“Guys, I love your pups, but I’m never having kids of my own.”

Michael laughed. He checked the empty bottle in his hand after Jimmy ejected the nipple decisively. He wiped the pup’s face with a deft hand and let the boy roll out of his lap to explore the blanket. Michael watched Alex checking on his parents in between pitiful sobs and had to stifle another chuckle. It was too soon to predict, but Michael could imagine Alex developing a full brat as he matured, and he pitied whoever landed on the other end of such a beast.

Michael leaned back on his hands and turned his face up to the sunshine as Charlie had done, enjoying the warmth, one ear keenly attentive to his son’s wails. The air held a slight chill, but the sunshine was warm enough to bask in. At length, Alex sat up again, sniveling. Pouting.

Michael glanced over and held a hand out to him. The pup pushed himself to his feet and ambled across the short distance, collapsing into Michael’s arms to be crushed in a meaty hug, complete with face-covering kisses. Michael cleaned his son’s face and turned him around to sit in the nest of O-Pop’s crossed legs, praising him and snuggling him in close. Jimmy found a short stick and shoved it into his mouth before his mother could replace it with a toy from the stroller.

It was a lovely day to sit outside.

Michael received a text from the house. Eunice, it seemed, had finished with her cleaning duties, and was free to help with the pups. Charlie pounced on the offer, reminding Michael that he was supposed to be studying.

Charlie put Emma in her seat in the stroller and then peeled Jimmy’s stick out of his hand and settled him behind Em. April didn’t need any convincing, handing Kat over right away when Charlie reached for her. Kat got the front seat, and Charlie buckled her in before turning again to Michael. Michael hadn’t moved. He didn’t want to study. He wanted to sit in the sunshine and enjoy his family. The pups were growing up too fast. It was all moving too fast. And April was leaving soon for two weeks.

“Tell you what,” said Charlie with a shrewd look on her face as she eased Alex out of Michael’s lap. “I’m taking these guys up to the house. Eunice and Monica and I will keep them busy for the rest of the afternoon. You two are pup-free until I have to go home at six. What you do with that time is not my concern. But there’s room to study if that’s what you need to do.”

“You’re not staying for dinner?” April asked.

“No. I have a date tonight. Gotta get home and tidy up a little first, trim the shrubbery, make sure everything smells nice. You know the drill. I wanna encourage her to get dirty later, so I need to spend some time sprucing up the landing. She has this thing she does with the very tip of her tongue.” Charlie didn’t so much as blush as she buckled Alex into the high seat in the back. She addressed April. “You know the thing, right? The tongue thing?”

April laughed. “I know of several tongue things. Which one?”

“Do you two really have to discuss this now? My pups are listening.” Michael stood up and gathered items, tossing them into the back of the stroller.

“Oh, please,” protested April. “You’re not worried about the pups. You’re just concerned you may suffer by comparison if Charlie and I start comparing notes.” She was teasing, and Michael didn’t resent it so much as he wasn’t sure if he should join in the ribbing or stand above it all, leaving the two to their girl talk. Even months into their relationship, Michael was still off balance when it came to April.

“Do you have any complaints?” he asked pointedly, helping April fold the blanket. “I’d hate to think you were disappointed.” Charlie snorted.

“No,” said April with an innocent expression. “But I’m interested in hearing about this tongue-thing in case it’s something you don’t already know. I’d hate to think I’m missing out.”

Michael pulled her closer through his grip on the blanket, and his smolder turned her pupils wide. “Any time you’re worried you’re missing out, you just tell me, and I’ll fix it.” April stared up at him, caught by his confidence and the look of promise in his eyes, and she flushed bright red. “I have a very talented and trainable tongue,” he whispered. He took advantage of the proximity to touch his lips to hers in a tease of a kiss, leaving off with the barest touch of the tip of his tongue to her upper lip.

“And on that note…” Charlie broke in, taking the blanket and stuffing it into the stroller’s storage basket. “Maybe studying isn’t on the top of your to-do list. Last I heard, you two were still dancing around the idea of setting a Claim-bond between you. Pretty day like this…”

_”Charlie…!”_ Michael hissed. He went red and lost his seductive demeanor.

Charlie turned to him and set her fists on her hips. “Michael, I love you, but you’re a moron sometimes. That’s all I’m going to say. Ta, bitches!” She unclipped the brake on the stroller and began the arduous trek back up the incline toward the house. Michael took one step to follow her and then stopped, watching her approach Portia’s run and fumble her way through the gate to both Portia’s and Alex’s delight.

Eventually, he turned his head and caught April’s eye. She gazed back at him, expressionless, waiting for Michael to choose a direction. Michael gave up trying to decide and sank back to the ground with his back against the huge trunk, defaulting to stasis. He tugged on April’s hand until she joined him, leaning back into him so they could enjoy the afternoon sunshine together.

They didn’t talk for a long time. Michael caressed her arm with a thumb. April reached back and ran the backs of her fingers down his stubbly cheek.

“Some Omega men don’t have facial hair,” she observed at last, earning a huff from him at her choice of topics.

“The Deeper ones,” he agreed with his face close to her ear.

“Does that make them more feminine?” April asked.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Michael decided. “Less masculine, maybe. Not necessarily more feminine. They’re still men. It’s just hair.”

Michael liked conversing with April like this. Their words were meaningless. Neither of them cared what the topic was, but the distraction allowed them both to scent the wind with their other designations and speak to each other under the surface. Michael’s wolf was alert, a rare occurrence in April’s presence, and it was listening to what she wasn’t saying. It was listening to the rumble of her subtext, to her wolf and her Omega.

Michael kept a wary eye on it.

He shifted his touch to pass over her breast in a barely-there caress, testing her eagerness. He felt her respond with a miniscule arcing of her spine, barely a motion at all. Inside his head, he felt no corresponding shiver.

“But it’s all fluid, really, isn’t it?” she asked. “The genders? They flow together in the middle, in a way?”

“Maybe. I don’t think it’s that simple, Pete.” He said her name like a prayer, changing the entire meaning of the sentence, and he felt her melt further. He wanted to know what she was feeling, but he couldn’t sense her at all. “I don’t think it’s a straight line – more like a matrix, maybe.”

“Michael,” she breathed.

He leaned down and kissed her throat softly, carefully, his thumb passing across her nipple and causing a shudder in its wake. Not being able to feel the essence of that shudder in his own body sent a soft growl escaping from between his lips. Her hand snaked back to pull at the back of his neck until his hot breath coursed along her collarbone, and he had to pull up onto his knees behind her.

Michael spread his palms wide beneath the hem of her sweatshirt, palming her hips to feel no fabric covering her lower half but the length of his oversized top. He pulled it up and over her head, holding it while she pulled her arms through and tossing it aside. He unhooked her bra and slid that off too, tossing it to join her shirt. Michael instantly regretted sending the blanket back with Charlie, but the grass was soft if a little cool, still green and pliant as December waned warmer than usual. He fondled her heavy breasts, kneading the soft richness of them, watching them shift under the play of his hands, watching a touch of moisture leak from each nipple. He rubbed the wetness in in circles to coat her areolas, squeezing on each pass to encourage more of a dribble to leak out, letting it dribble down to her belly.

April pressed her head back into his shoulder and buried her nose behind his right ear.

“Can you feel me, Pete? Can you feel what you do to me?” He shifted his hips beneath her slightly, and she moaned.

“Michael, I need more. Please try. I need to feel you for real. I can see you inside – some of you – but I can’t feel you. I can’t do this without feeling you. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m blind. Baby, please.”

He panted with want, kissing along her shoulder, avoiding her Mating-scar, taking his time everywhere else. He heard the desperation in her plea. Michael was astute enough to know that she had been adamantly, stubbornly repressing an impulse to manipulate him into Claiming her. They both knew she could do it if she tried. It would take no more than a carefully constructed provocation that irritated his wolf into lashing out.

But she hadn’t done that. Instead, she’d waited for him to find his way to it on his own, and occasionally she asked again as a reminder she hadn’t changed her mind.

It had been months since he’d agreed to set them a scaffold.

She’d waited for months.

He felt his wolf’s keen eagerness perk up, a line of hot drool falling from its hungry maw, and he felt it paw at the ground in anticipation.

Michael snarled at his wolf. He fixed it with a powerful glare, warning it to back down. The wolf glared back, hungry and impatient. Michael kissed along April’s collarbone and then shifted her until he could stretch out beside her in the soft grass. It tickled, but Michael wasn’t paying attention to the exterior. His eye was fixed internally, upon his own treacherous wolf. April’s body rose to meet his touch everywhere his hands roamed. She was pliable and antsy, impatient for more, but Michael’s eye wasn’t truly seeing her either. In his head, he was circling the wolf. If he was going to Claim his girl, he could only do it safely from his Primary, from inside his head, fueled by his Omega. The wolf had no place in that transaction. Michael needed it kenneled, but his wolf had other ideas.

The scrawny black wolf in Michael’s mind jeered as they circled each other. He had watched from behind bars too long as ripe, tender young flesh passed under his nose again and again without any chance for him to taste it, and now she was right there, and he wasn’t caged. He knew that if Michael caught him, he would be stuffed muzzle-first into a box again, so his only chance to touch the girl was in defeating his alpha. The wolf had no interest in her personally, but ownership was ownership, and the wolf wanted bound flesh.

But it was wary of Michael’s intense green eyes.

And so they circled.

Michael laid his ears down flat and he raised his lips to show his sharp canines, white and menacing in the moonlight. He turned his eyes a brilliant gold that pulled in light and power from a far, deep place to shore up his muscles, and he stalked in a slow, ominous circle around the dark beast.

The live oak faded into obscurity and the sun disappeared entirely, leaving a primordial forest bathed in moonlight, dense and dark and loamy, soft beneath his four paws, richly scented and alive, breathing as one organism. Michael circled his wolf, and his wolf’s eyes glowed blue.

They each searched for a moment of weakness, watching for a strike or a pounce or a lunge, but neither ready to strike without a clear advantage. Michael pulled power from the deep well of ancient prowess under his Omega’s custody. The wolf could only count on the strength of his confidence, his bearing, his cocky arrogance, but there was no knowing for certain until they tested one another if the wolf’s Dominant conceit might just be enough to swing the tide of decision this time. Certainly, he wanted it badly enough.

They didn’t speak.

They couldn’t if they’d wanted to, each bound by the limits of a canine maw.

But their eyes spoke volumes, and the building tension in their muscles told of preparation to unleash. Both had become springs of potential energy, winding up tight, ready to lash out.

The wolf pawed the ground in front of him, turning the rich soil with his sharp claws, leaving jagged stripes in the loam, but Michael didn’t react to the threat. Michael had his eyes on the wolf’s eyes and one sliver of attention focused on his hips. It was that sliver that caught the shift of weight just before the wolf leapt at him, teeth bared and jaw gaping, reaching for Michael’s jugular. Michael jumped back just in time and then used the miss to fall upon the beast with teeth flashing viciously.

They scrabbled and snapped at each other savagely, no quarter asked, none granted, utterly contemptuous and ignoring the connection between them. Michael felt teeth sink into his leg, and he jerked it free, feeling the skin tear as he ripped loose, only to turn in place and dive back in to attack even more furiously.

Blood dribbled down Michael’s leg to run between his toes in a sticky coating. He ignored the blood and the pain.

Michael _had_ to win this battle. Everything depended upon it.

Everything.

They leapt apart and crashed back together multiple times, bloodying one another on each pass, but neither finding a real hold that they could clench down into. Michael circled, his head low and engaged, watching, watching. Without warning, he pivoted and met the beast head-on, jumping him from a direction the wolf didn’t expect. His growls sounded loud in his own ears, feral and fierce.

He pinned the wolf beneath his weight and snapped his jaws, missing the wolf’s throat by millimeters and losing him again as the fucker wormed his way free. Swiveling where he stood, he met the attack with jaws gaping, and they both sank canines into flesh, each clamping down and drawing blood and pain, each desperate to gain the advantage of height and position over the other.

And then a new wolf appeared from the dark mists. Michael’s eyes jumped about without releasing his hold as he searched the woods for what he was certain he’d just seen out of the corner of his eye. She was sleek and blonde and massive, her eyes golden, her teeth bared, her sudden vicious bites striking again and again at their mutual foe – a bite and release and a retreat, and then another from a random direction, in and snap and draw blood, and then vanish. She struck Michael’s wolf over and over while Michael held fast to his throat, his mouth full of gamey fur.

Michael maintained his jaw lock on his own wolf’s throat. It wasn’t a killing hold. For, angry as Michael was, he couldn’t kill his own wolf. He only needed to defeat it. He wasn’t sure the wolf understood the limit though. Certainly, it seemed not to be pulling its strikes. The wolf’s teeth in Michael’s shoulder was a blaze of pain that tore endlessly at his concentration.

Michael had no idea what the ramifications would be if either of them dealt a killing blow to the other. Would it hold in the outer world?

The blonde wolf struck again, a harsh snap at the wolf’s hindquarters that had it tucking under and turning its head without releasing Michael’s shoulder, an attempt to catch where she would strike next. The pain shooting through Michael’s muscle blazed like a lightning strike. His wolf kicked out, but the blonde wolf struck next at its underbelly, and the wolf yiped and let go of Michael.

Michael shook his head vigorously, shaking the wolf in his grip until he was dizzy, and he snarled like a beast, his own throat making sounds he didn’t recognize at all as self. When the blonde wolf dove in again, Michael timed his move, using the wolf’s distraction to shift across, releasing its throat and taking hold of his wolf by the shoulder from above, just where it joined with his powerful neck, clamping down hard with a grip that no wolf could shake off.

Michael’s snarling increased in volume and intent, and he thrust his hips downward, seeking completion, even as his wolf dodged.

Michael…

…was done playing around.

Then, furious and formidable, face to face with Michael’s wolf, the blonde wolf stalked slowly closer until she stood nose to nose with it, her eyes glowing golden in their unblinking command, spittle dripping from her teeth, her lips pulled up high and feral, a force of nature, powerful and unsettling, and Michael’s wolf froze.

Above him, Michael re-set his stance until he had his wolf pinned. He wrapped his front legs tightly around the wolf’s ribs, his dew claws digging divots in the wolf’s flesh, and he tugged backward with his legs as he thrust forward with his hips. He rutted madly, frustrated and futile for a few harsh guttural breaths, and then he felt his cock sink into tight warm wetness.

And then Michael unleashed his rage on his wolf from above, rutting wildly, forcing the mongrel into the dirt, digging in hard with his legs until the wolf whimpered beneath him. Michael’s eye’s locked with the blonde wolf’s, and he snarled in feverish effort, watching her eyes shift back to a soft baby blue and her face take on a lazy appreciative slackness with her tongue hanging from the side of her mouth. She slumped down on the ground several feet in front of the couple and licked herself, waiting for Michael to finish, seeming almost bored now that the battle was decided.

Michael’s body ached from so many wounds. He was dizzy, but he thrust into the whimpering body of his wolf until he felt the rushing quickening of a Claim-bond rising within his gut. He bit down harder on his wolf’s left shoulder, feeling a stereoscopic echo that made his head ring, tearing at flesh that was truly his own flesh and fucking hard into a channel that didn’t exist in the physical world.

Michael climaxed hard, pushing outward with all of his intention. The blonde wolf looked up, her ears pricking forward, and he locked eyes with her, his body exploding in sensation that raced down every vein and capillary, along every nerve, through every sinew until his vision whited out.

When his eyes cleared, they were both naked in the grass, both fully human beneath the sheltering branches of the live oak tree, and the sun had hardly moved. The breeze, cool now that they were nude, pebbled their skin with chills. Michael was panting, breathless, confused, disoriented. His cock was still hard and buried inside April’s channel, beginning to soften before it slid wetly out. Both of his arms clung tightly around her chest, binding her arms to her sides at the elbows, and crossing around her chest in possession.

His teeth.

Michael tasted his teeth and found no blood. He lifted his head from where he pressed it hard between her shoulder blades, and he looked her back and shoulders over. She wasn’t bleeding; not her shoulder, not her throat, not her back or her arms, all places Michael knew he’d managed to sink his teeth into his metaphysical adversary.

There was a reddened circle on her left shoulder, but no divots. He hadn’t bitten her at all, it seemed, not with his teeth bared. But he had obviously fucked her senseless, until he filled her channel with his come and collapsed on top of her in exhaustion.

He blinked in the harshness of the light, so different from the dark glow of the moon in his internal world.

“Christ, what’ve I done?” he murmured, finding it difficult to let her go. He rolled off onto his back and blinked up through the shifting green leaves high above him. “I Dominated _him,_ not you, Pete. Not you! The Claim was meant for _him!_ Jesus! Pete? Baby, are you hurt?”

She uncurled slowly and blinked up at him with an oddly satisfied expression. She chuckled awkwardly. “See for yourself,” she offered cryptically, holding his hand to her soft belly to keep him close. Michael felt a nudge from inside his head, and he traced it to where it lodged, exploring it, following it back along its trajectory until he found her.

Michael’s eyes widened, and he sat up so quickly he went dizzy and had to put a hand to his head. “I Claimed you?”

“You were magnificent,” she confirmed.

Michael licked his lips and rocked slightly in consternation. “Did I hurt you? Did I … bite you?”

“No, Michael. I’m fine. You fought hard, but it wasn’t me you were fighting. I’m so proud of you. No one’s ever done anything like that for me before. You beat him. Drubbed him into the dirt like a dog and sent him scurrying back to his cave to pout. It was incredible.” She laughed gleefully, her eyes alight.

“I don’t understand,” Michael pleaded, getting up onto his knees. “You were there. You saw?”

April’s smile faded and her eyes grew glassy, turned inward in reflection, searching. “I don’t know what I saw, exactly. It was all blurry, like a dream. I dreamed you were fighting your own wolf and my wolf went to help. I can’t say much for sure because it’s all jumbled up in my head, but you won, and then you Claimed me, and it was spectacular.” April rolled off her belly, rather boneless in her afterglow. Michael searched her body with his eyes, desperate to prove to himself that he’d not scarred her with claw and tooth. His vision had seemed so real he could nearly taste the loam and sinew between his teeth. He could still feel the dribble of thickening blood make its way down his arm. He looked down at his own arm, which had been a leg, a black fur-covered leg, a ripped and bloodied black fur-covered leg, and only fine soft hair and a few freckles met his examination. Michael ran his hand over it, over the place where vicious teeth had dug in and ripped flesh open. There was no lingering pain but what tickled his memory, fading swiftly like the disappearance of a dream upon waking.

“You came to help,” he murmured. He lifted his hand to pass it across the shoulder that his wolf had clung to, puncturing the deep meat of his muscles, but there was nothing now but pristine skin.

“You would have beat him anyway,” she said smugly. “I only sped up the decision.”

“He thinks I’m alpha,” Michael realized. “It’s true. I felt it.”

“Well then your wolf is a bit dim, Michael,” April told him as she pushed herself to sit up. “Your eyes are gold, not red. It’s kind of a giveaway. And you have no knot.” She chuckled.

Michael reached out to steady her as she found herself a little shaken upon straightening.

“Easy, Pete. Take your time. Are you hurt at all? Anywhere?”

April smiled serenely at him. “I’m not hurt, Michael. I’m fine.”

“I didn’t hurt you? My vision…I don’t see how you could have been at ground zero for that and not be injured. My god, Pete, you faced off against him and he backed down. I’ve never seen him to that for anyone who’s not his clear Top. You stood nose to nose with him and he rolled.”

She laughed. “To be perfectly honest,” she told him, “It wasn’t me he was rolling for. It was you. I just encouraged him to concede that he’d lost.” She laughed happily. “The look in his eye, Michael. That part was crystal clear. You had him, and he was livid. It was beautiful. And then it was like I snapped back to myself. You rolled me and really just…went for it. It hurt when you tackled me and mounted me, but only a little, and in the best possible way. I love that kind of hurt. It’s hot and a little scary, but it was delicious, and it was you. It was you,” she repeated with a blush, lowering her eyes. She regrouped quickly. “I’m not damaged, Michael. See for yourself.” April held her arms up to show him the minimal crazing of carpet burn on her forearms and touched her knees to press into the redness there. The palms of her hands were bright pink. But search as he might, he couldn’t find any further injury. Her channel wasn’t torn, just freshly Claimed. Her shoulder wasn’t punctured.

And her scent.

Michael could smell a trace of his own possession in her scent. It was changed. It was like a sliver of Michael stayed rooted within her. It was the same kind of scent shift he’d smelled on Dean the morning after they Mated, only this was miniscule in comparison.

“I didn’t bite you,” he said softly, confirming again as if saying it out loud over and over would sink the reality into his head. His fingertips traversed her unblemished shoulder. It was reddened slightly, like her knees, but there were no teeth marks. No punctures. No scarring. She couldn’t have said if his observation was regretful or relieved.

“You latched on,” she clarified. “But you covered your teeth with your lips. You were grounding me, not trying to mark me, and even as out of it as you were, you clamped down on the other shoulder from where the Alpha put his mark. You really don’t remember any of this?”

He shook his head. “I was inside my head,” he admitted. “In the wolf-scape. Everything happened very differently in there. You were there, your wolf at least, but you and I weren’t… In there, it wasn’t you I Claimed at all, it was him.”

“Your wolf.”

Michael nodded.

April stared at him. “I saw some of the battle,” she told him. “Like I said, it’s fuzzy, but I felt like I got pulled in when my wolf jumped in to help. Once you defeated your wolf…”

“I Dominated him,” Michael told her in a soft reticent voice. “Tore his ass up, kinda brutally, kinda like an animal. Pete, you have to be honest with me. Did I DF you? Did I just rape you? I need the truth.”

April broke out in a musical peal of laughter. “No, sweetheart. No. You Claimed me, and it was perfect. Whatever happened inside your head, Michael, it wasn’t real, not out here. I know the battle was real, and you had no choice but to put his mangy head to the ground and take him hard. You had no choice. But what you did to your wolf, that’s not what you did to me. I guess maybe your Omega made use of the arousal while it was there. Does that make any sense? Maybe your Omega felt a Claim coming and managed to get your physical body lined up to take advantage of what your internal body was experiencing; gave the Claim somewhere to land when you sent it out. Where you were mostly internal with an unconscious part of you acting in the real world, I was mostly in the physical world with a small barely-conscious part of me acting in the internal wolf-scape. I saw a different view than you did, baby. And I’m not hurt. Please believe I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

Michael took a deep, cleansing breath and sighed hard. “I missed everything,” he complained sadly. “I missed my own Claiming of the woman of my dreams.” He looked across at her, and she snorted and laughed. Michael smirked and then chuckled a little.

“It’s not funny,” he protested which only served to make her laugh harder.

“Aren’t you going to explore what you fought for?” she asked. “You won the prize, Michael. Don’t you want to see?” April sent a tempting sense of beckoning along the line that still shivered between them, and Michael dropped everything in his proverbial hands and hustled along after her, eager to see it for himself.

“Pete, you’re beautiful,” he breathed with his eyes closed as he explored the depth in her psyche. He shuffled across the grassy span between them without opening his eyes and pulled her in close, stroking her hair, feeling her from the inside out. “You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined. God, I love you so much – so damn much.” He buried his nose behind her ear and whuffed as he attempted to catch hold of his tumbling emotions. She clung to him just as tightly.

“I love you, too,” she told him soberly. “And I got to see your wolf. He’s exactly how I imagined him.”

“You imagined my wolf?” he asked, pulling back to look at her.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it,” she teased. “Everyone thinks about it.” She paused for a moment and licked her lips. “You saw mine?”

He grinned. “She’s gorgeous, just like you are,” he told her with pride. “And she’s huge! I’ll be honest, Pete, it never occurred to me that yours would be that … expansive.”

“Why, because I’m Ozzie?”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Michael admitted.

“I guess that goes to show you about making assumptions about people, doesn’t it?” April kissed him on the nose, and he grinned boyishly.

“I guess it does.” Michael studied her face, trying to conjure up the image of her blonde wolf to overlay it across her features in a way he could remember. He had no idea if he would ever glimpse the real thing again, and he didn’t want to forget. He found that his staring had elicited a simple acquiescence from April, a patience in waiting, and he leaned in at last and sealed her lips with his own, a kiss of promise and certainty, his knuckle crooked beneath her chin.

He felt it from inside his head this time, that kiss, and he let her feel his wonder in return. She was soft and receptive, and she was fierce and resounding, and she was everything. Michael whined in earnest and leaned in, forcing her back, laying her down. He touched the tip of his tongue to the seal of her lips, and she opened for him. From somewhere deep inside, Michael felt a rush of emotion begin to build and to resonate, and he rolled with it, giving in to it, letting it moisten his lashes and tighten his grip.

He could _feel_ her. And she loved him.

Michael made love to her tenderly this time, carefully. They moved together as mates do, sinuously, in sync, as one piece with two parts. And Michael shared everything he could with her…including the talents of his tongue. At length, they sat tangled together under the tree, talking, trying to work up to getting dressed again, keeping each other warm as the breeze picked up and the sun dropped.

“I won’t let you get that overwhelmed again, Pete,” Michael promised. “I didn’t know. But I can see it now. I can help watch out for you.”

“I’ll take all the help I can get,” she agreed. “I feel much better now. I Released for you. Did you feel it?”

“You did? No, I didn’t feel it. I was elsewhere, remember?”

April laughed merrily. “Cas is gonna blow a gasket. He’s going to grill you over the details of your vision. You weren’t even unconscious this time.”

“We should go back up to the house,” Michael prompted, making no move to get up or to untangle himself. “I’m going to be in big trouble for not cracking a book open since ten this morning. I’m gonna fail this anatomy test.”

“We can all help you this evening,” April suggested. “Dean won’t let you fail. He’ll stay up with you all night if he has to. And Cas and I can take the pups and give you two a nice long study session, uninterrupted. Besides, you work hard in those classes, Michael. I’ll bet you know more than you think you do.”

“Hm,” Michael replied. “Well, I’ll know for sure after my test. Come on. Up you get. Let’s go face the gauntlet.” Michael stood and pulled her up with him. He didn’t bother to dress. Neither did April. They gathered their scattered clothes, Michael discovering that his blue jeans were ripped irreparably. He waggled his fingers at her through the hole and she smirked.

“Hey,” Michael opened as they approached the house hand in hand. “Don’t get too upset, but Alpha’s going to insist on hiring a nanny.”

“What?”

“After what happened today, he made a good point. There are four of us, and we wanted to believe that’s enough for our family, but the truth is that all four of us have careers that mean something to us. If none of us is willing to sacrifice their career to be a stay at home, we need help. The housekeepers have their own responsibilities. Taking care of the pups isn’t a one-person thing anyway. It takes two people, minimum, whenever they’re in transition. Lord, Pete, just getting them up and down the stairs is a job in itself.”

“Gabe suggested installing a slide.”

Michael snorted at that. “And a foam-filled landing pad. I know. He told me. What I wouldn’t give for an elevator.”

They reached the dog-run, and Michael opened the gate and handed April inside before following and securing the latch carefully. Portia emerged through the dog door from the kitchen and bounded across to them. She reached them and thumped down to sit before April, her backside on the ground, but her tail wagging furiously and her tongue lolling out of her happy face.

“Good girl!” April enthused, kneeling down to pet her and play with the ruff of her neck. “You didn’t jump! Such a sweet dog!” April devolved into baby talk and let Portia cover her face with kisses which Michael couldn’t bear to watch. He rolled his eyes and continued on into the kitchen.

He found Dean frowning into the fridge and then pulling out the tray of chicken thighs. “You’re home,” Michael deduced.

“It’s five-thirty, man. Where else would I be? Where’s Tony, and why isn’t dinner cooking? Jesus, Michael, why are you nude and reeking?

“Oh.” Dean’s eyes widened comically.

“OH!” The refrigerator door slammed shut, and Dean set the tray of chicken on the island with a ‘thunk’.

_”OH!!”_ Dean stepped up to Michael, took hold of his chin and turned his face this way and that while he searched the Omega’s eyes.

“Holy shit! You did it? You did it!” Dean pulled Michael in for a congratulatory hug, thumping him hard on the back.

“Ow.”

“Up top, dude!” Dean cheered, raising his hand for a high five as he released Michael.

“No, thanks,” Michael demurred, feeling self-conscious at his nakedness under the harsh kitchen lights. “I’m gonna go clean up and hit the books if you’ve got dinner? Tony’s taking a personal day.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Dean said, hiding his slight disappointment in Michael’s brush off. The Omega could be a bit skittish when he felt vulnerable, and Dean let him be. He turned toward April as she and Portia ambled in together though, and his eyes lit back up. “Well? How do you feel?” he prompted. “Glowing? Can you feel it effervesce? Does it tingle under your skin?”

April granted Dean a happy smile and came in close for a full hug, feeling blessed to have a Pack that would celebrate with her. “It feels good, Dean,” she admitted. “You should get Michael to tell you all about it. He had quite an experience making it happen. He walked the wolf-scape again. Battled his own Tertiary while he was wide awake. It was epic…and terrifying.”

“He did?” Dean released her and followed his bond with Michael until his eyes found a straight line to his mate, already upstairs preparing to shower. “I felt something weird. I thought he was working out with the punching bag or something. Man, that guy. Never know what he’s going to do next.”

“He was incredible, Dean.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” Dean winked at her conspiratorially. “Go on up and clean up,” Dean told her. “Cas is upstairs changing. He’ll wanna know right away. He’ll wanna check your new bond with a meter. I’ll figure dinner out. Who’s got the pups?”

“Charlie came over to pup-sit,” April told him as she headed out. “She needed to leave around six though. I’ll check on them before I go upstairs. I wanna share the good news with her too.”

“Yeah, good. Oh, hey, kid.”

April stopped in the archway and looked back.

“Cas said you had a rough day. Does this make up for it? Are you even-keeled again?”

April half-smiled. “It makes up for a lot, Dean. But I’m still pretty beat. I’m not feeling as overwhelmed or hopeless anymore, but I’m still exhausted. Michael didn’t get much studying done today, I’m afraid. I needed him to take the pups, so he did that instead. And what with looking after me, pulling extra O-Pop duties, battling his wolf to the death, and Mating his girlfriend, I think he’s earned a pass on studying before dinner. He still has to pass the test though. Would you mind trading Doms with me tonight? Cas and I can feed and bathe the pups and get them down for the night if you’ll help Michael cram for his test tomorrow.”

Dean nodded with a knowing expression, a deep crow’s feet of wrinkles growing at the corners of his eyes. He glanced away briefly as if ordering his reply and then approached her slowly, ponderously. “If he’d battled his wolf to the death,” he mused, “then we would have a real problem on our hands. I’m thinking that’s an exaggeration. And if you’re going to go around telling people you Mated my mate, then you and I, missy, are about to have words. Now, what was it you wanted to ask me?”

April laughed, and Dean chuckled. He couldn’t resist hugging her again, kissing the top of her head. “Go on, you little minx. Go tell Cas we’re swapping tonight. Ask him to choose a wine for dinner since I’m not going to be scening after all.”

“I’m sorry, Dean.” April broke away and made a regretful face. “I’ll make it up to you.”

He pointed at her as he returned to the tray of chicken to work out how to cook it rapidly without ruining it. “I get to kneel for Alpha tomorrow morning,” he told her. “I’ll ask your mate to let you sleep in.”

“Deal.” And with that, she was gone.

Dean turned silently back to his work, comforted by the familiarity of his kitchen, his mind enmeshed in his mate’s ebullience, and his own sense of stability shaken a bit. This was a good evolution. It was good. Michael was happy, and the very essence of that was a deep pleasure inside Dean’s soul. He felt Michael’s joy like a reverberation that solidified his own contentment.

But Mating-responses aside, Dean was shaken. His hands moved by rote, collecting ingredients to feed his Pack and beginning preparations to turn those ingredients into tasty dishes that his Pack would enjoy.

He didn’t resent Michael’s connection to April, not the closeness they shared nor the shiny new bond-link. But there would be fallout. There was always fallout when their complex dynamics shifted, and today’s events marked a radical and irrevocable shift. The ground trembled beneath Dean’s feet just a little. He felt his footing weaken. A reckoning was coming, but it wasn’t here quite yet, and Dean couldn’t tell if it would be a reckoning of his own, isolated inside Dean’s psyche exclusively, or if all four of them would feel the earth tremble.

For now, he had dinner to cook and a mate who had better get his ass in gear studying if he didn’t want a humiliating grade on an anatomy exam that he’d promised to ace. Dean chose his footing carefully as he crossed the span of shaky ground beneath him, and it held.

It would hold for a while yet.

Dean had responsibilities to cinch down before the storm swept him up into chaotic motion and noise.

He opened the cabinet and rummaged for pans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, trying to press Michael into Claiming April went nowhere for ages. I couldn't make him commit to it. He kept telling me it wasn't time yet and that he needed to think it through to keep her safe. This section started as a hypothetical exercise I convinced him to try - just to see where it went. Once his wolf showed up and squared off, it all fell into place. It's a bit of a copout, but I'm happy with it anyway.
> 
> Hang in there, folks. _"Every storm runs out of rain."_ \- Maya.


	8. Thursday, December 20, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pack culture is finally starting to sink in for Sarah, although not in the easy way. Michael gets a chance to talk his out-of-body experience over with his mate. Dean's solid for the moment and standing his ground, but the writing is on the wall. Can he make it through Christmas? It's getting to where he can't make it through dinner. Castiel is grounded and planted and holding steady as a Pack Alpha must, rooting them all in stability.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me, or is there a weird and stark divide between "then" and "now" that makes reading stories written pre-Corona virus or watching shows produced prior to March 1 feel oddly surreal? We don't live in that world anymore, and it feels bizarre to see no reference of the pandemic from items created just a month ago.
> 
> This chapter is number 4 of 4, all written in one long, crazy, manic anxiety-fest. As such, it was written weeks ago. It feels odd to me now. It feels irrelevant, somehow - trivial. I had to go through a mental exercise before making the decision to post it...an exercise consisting of asking myself if this chapter even makes a point in the wider scheme of both reality and the story itself. Does it add anything new? Is it relevant? Is it necessary?
> 
> Yeah, I'm not sure.
> 
> In the scope of posting something that may serve as escapism, I'm hoping there's value in that. In the scope of offering a continually richer view of the AU in which the story is set, I'll leave that up to the reader to evaluate. Is it still showing new perspective, or have I begun to repeat myself?
> 
> At the very least, it offers a bit more explanation of what happened between Michael and his wolf last chapter. For clarification, just let me say that the battle Michael experienced is exactly what his and Castiel's wolves experience every time there's a confrontation within their heads. That's how the wolves always see it. I'm not sure that came across clearly last chapter.
> 
> Anyway...enjoy 4 of 4.

Dean had the chicken pan-frying in three separate pans over three separate burners as he prepared broccoli to steam and chopped up a salad. It wasn’t going to be a lavish meal, but it would feed them on the fly. Sarah came jauntily down the back stairs two at a time and appeared in the kitchen looking fresh-faced and cheerful, offering to help.

Dean pointed at the rice cooker. “We need a carb or Michael’s gonna bitch,” he told her. “Oh, and something else came up. You got a second?”

“Sure,” she agreed. She disappeared into the pantry and came out with a bag of rice. She measured it into the cooker, added water and salt, and set the timer. “What’s up?”

“When’s your next review meeting?” Dean asked, checking the chicken.

“My dissertation?”

“No, your screenplay,” Dean deadpanned. “Yes, your dissertation. When’s your update deadline?”

“Next month,” Sarah answered, a little puzzled.

“Lotta pressure right now? Feeling a bit overwhelmed?” Dean licked his thumb and then turned to the sink to wash his hands. 

“Naturally,” she replied. “But I think I’m in good shape all in all. I have a lot of work to do, but it’s coming together. I’ll be ready. It’s not in final draft shape yet, but it doesn’t have to be.”

Dean stared at her. “How are you this calm? Your whole doctorate is on the line, and they aren’t going to go easy on you. No one’s going to hand you anything. This is the point where everything has to stand up to scrutiny or you get knocked on your ass and wind up scrubbing the whole thing to start over. Aren’t you a little bit anxious?”

“What?” she asked. “Are you _trying_ to freak me out? I mean, I might still need to pull a couple of all-nighters. I need to sit down with Jess and Michael one at a time for a couple more check ins. But Cas has been amazing in his support. He’s a great teacher. I’m in good shape. Really. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Dean turned back to the chicken, deemed it close and then turned the fire on under the broccoli. “No reason,” he said with his back to her. “Only you were right in front of us heading into the garage tonight, right? No more than a minute or two in front of Cas and me?”

“I guess so. I heard the garage door open while I was changing upstairs. Why?” Sarah scooted up onto one of the bar stools at the island and frowned at him.

“That’s what I thought. And the Omegas were both here all day. Charlie parked out front and used the front door. Cain is in Tennessee. Gabe and Kali always use the side entrance. The staff come in the back door. Sam and Jess aren’t here yet. Tell me,” He turned around and leaned into the counter by the stove. “Did you see anything on the garage floor by the door into the house on your way in?”

“Like what?” she asked. She could feel the alpha weighing her reaction. He was making her nervous. “Dean, what’s with the third degree?”

“I found something on the floor on my way in, and it was kinda hard to miss. I figure that either you saw it and stepped over it instead of picking it up, or you’re the one who dropped it. Considering no one else likely used that door all day, and I know it isn’t mine or Castiel’s…”

“I didn’t see anything,” she told him. “What did you find?”

“Is there anything you want to tell me, beta?” Dean asked.

“Am I in trouble for something?”

“Have you broken any rules?” he gave back.

“No.” She swallowed. “I don’t think so.”

Dean nodded and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a plastic baggie with stark white tablets in it and tossed it onto the island in front of her. “Are those yours?”

Sarah picked the baggie up and flushed. “Yes, they are. But they aren’t illicit, Dean. I have a prescription.”

Dean didn’t answer right away. He went back to the stove and turned the chicken over, piece by piece. When he wiped his hands on a towel and answered, his voice was hard. “Given the nature of this conversation,” he said. “I would appreciate your calling me _’alpha’_ or _’Sir’_ until I’m satisfied that we’ve resolved the matter. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Try again, Sarah. Capital ‘S’.”

“Yes, _Sir,”_ she replied with some disquiet. “I told you. They aren’t illicit. I’m not breaking any rules. I don’t have to explain my health decisions to you, alpha.”

“Oh, really?” he posed. “You remember that Castiel is our Pack’s physician. Did he prescribe you those pills?”

“I went to another doctor,” she answered, lowering her eyes.

“Does Cas know about them?”

“It’s none of your business! Or Alpha’s!” she declared brazenly, the shift of her eyes giving away that she wasn’t as certain as she sounded.

Dean looked up at the ceiling and rubbed his face. “Sarah, I’m doing my damnedest to remember that you’re a Primate. But we’ve been over this. You joined this Pack _knowing_ what that means. Now, I get that Primate families don’t work this way, but in this Pack, you answer to the alphas. Why are those pills in a baggie if they’re legit. Answer me.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I have a prescription,” she told him again. “I take them twice a day. It was easier to separate some out to carry with me and leave the bottle at home with the rest.”

“So when I go up to your room and search it, I’m going to find the other half in an orange bottle with a legit label? Who’s your doctor?”

“You can’t search my room, Dean. I’m not a child. I don’t believe this!”

Dean held her eyes with a hard look and then he removed the chicken pieces from the pan, setting each one on a wire grate to drain the fat. Sarah watched him, speechless. Dean cut the burners under the three skillets and turned on his heel to ascend the stairs leading to the little apartment over the garage.

Sarah followed him with a gasp. “What are you doing? Stay out of my room! Dean!”

Dean was already in her bathroom rifling through the drawers. In the topmost one, he found what he was looking for. He uncapped the bottle and checked that they were the same pills he’d found on the floor. He glanced up as he screwed the cap back on, but his expression gave nothing away. Reading the label and pulling his phone out to search out the generic drug name and the prescribing doctor who’d signed for it, Dean ignored Sarah’s outrage.

She fell silent as he read through the purpose of the pills and looked back up at her, showing her the search result. Sheepishly, she sat down on her bed.

“I thought you were acting too chipper for this stage of your progress,” he told her. “I remember what the last year of the doctoral process was like, kid, and it was rough. No one’s cheerful through the last leg. If your eyes aren’t bloodshot, something’s off.”

“I’m not a kid,” she told him sourly.

“Sorry. That was rude. I apologize.”

Dean let the silence lengthen, letting her think about Pack and rules and lines of hierarchy. 

“Is there any way you’re not going to tell him?” she asked at last.

“There’s one way,” he told her. He leaned against her bathroom counter and crossed one ankle over the other with the bottle still in his fist.

She looked up, hopeful.

He dashed her hopes with his next statement. 

“That’s if you do the right thing and tell him yourself.”

“If I wanted him to know, I would have asked him for the scrip,” she mumbled. “How are my health decisions about my own body any business of yours or his?”

Dean considered his answer for a minute. “Look, you’re an adult. I get that. And it’s not shameful to have anxiety. Lots of people do. Lots of people seek medical assistance for it. It’s not a big deal. And out in the Primate world, you have a right to decide these things for yourself and keep it private. But you’re not in the Primate world here. I know Cas explained this to you. I know he explained what having a Pack Alpha means in terms of your medical decisions. Sarah, I was there for some of those discussions, so don’t pretend you didn’t know. You knew. You just didn’t believe we were serious or that our having authority over your personal agency was real. You wanted the security of the Pack without handing over your autonomy to get it. It doesn’t work that way. You hid this from us intentionally, and I think you knew you’d get roasted if we found out. What else are you hiding? Are you taking sleeping pills too? Adderall? Anything else?”

“There’s nothing else, alpha,” she told him tiredly. “I’m not leaning on drugs to get me through. I just needed something to tamp down the nerves. I was making myself crazy with deadline pressures and overthinking and all that. I can’t believe you invaded my room. I’m not on drugs.”

Dean pushed off her bathroom counter and pulled her to her feet, taking the bottle with him. “Okay,” he said on his way back downstairs. “I believe you. But you’re still telling Cas. He’s responsible for your health, and he needs to know about this.”

“Dean, please.”

“No whining,” he cut her off. They reemerged into the kitchen, and Dean pulled the broccoli off the steamer. “Help me set the table.”

“Alpha, seriously. I’m begging you.”

Dean stopped in his tracks with a handful of plates, cocking his head. “How did you get these past the Facility turnstile?”

She sighed and took the plates from him.

“I haven’t needed to go in for the last couple of months. I’m working on campus now. And in the library. Or from home. Once I finished my observations, I didn’t need to be there at all.” She spread the plates out onto the dining room table.

“Oh,” he replied, following her in. “I didn’t realize.”

Sarah put a hand over his as he laid flatware out beside the plates she’d set out. “Alpha, please. I’m begging you.”

“Not how it works, Sarah,” he told her with a gentle touch to her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Don’t be afraid. He won’t be mad, just concerned. He doesn’t like being blindsided.”

“He’ll punish me.”

“Is that all you’re worried about? It’ll probably be me swinging the strap. I’m way easier than he is. Ask anyone.”

“You?!” she asked in shock, stepping back rapidly. “I didn’t swear to you, Dean.”

He laughed and left her on his way back into the kitchen. She followed hopelessly in his wake. “And you call yourself a PhD candidate,” he teased. “You swore to the _Pack,_ beta, and I’m alpha in this Pack. Sarah, chill. First of all, I’m hella relieved to find out those tablets aren’t something illegal and hardcore. This could’ve been a very different conversation. Second, if you were under the mistaken idea that you only sort of joined this Pack and that you only answer to the top dog, let me clarify. You’re sixth in rank. That means there are five of us above you who have the right and the responsibility to watch out for you and straighten you out when you veer off course. That’s not even counting our resident nineteen-rated Dominant. If you act up around Michael, and it looks like it’s coming from an irrational and impulsive part of you, he can and will take a stand to set you right.”

“Kali is above me,” Sarah murmured to herself, choosing to pretend she hadn’t heard Dean’s statement about Michael. 

“That’s right,” Dean agreed. He pulled a serving bowl out of the cabinet and transferred broccoli into it. He handed the broccoli to Sarah and carried the salad himself. Gently, he nudged her into taking her bowl into the dining room. “And if it had been Kali who found your pills, it would have been Kali having this discussion with you right now. And it would likely be Kali putting stripes on your ass.” 

“What’s this?” asked the elegant beta herself as she and Gabe arrived for dinner. “Why am I putting stripes on Sarah’s ass?” Kali sat regally down in her chair and looked up, curious.

Sarah spluttered in indignation. “It’s nothing,” she insisted, returning to the kitchen to fish out napkins. “Just a hypothetical,” she called back over her shoulder. Her face was on fire, and she caught Dean’s expression – quite a Toppy one, but she refused to elaborate further.

Once everyone was seated, served, and eating, Dean watched her. Her ears stayed bright pink, but she didn’t volunteer anything. Dean gave her time, shooting her encouraging glances all through dinner, but she let the conversation center around Jess’ birthday presents, around the idea of hiring a live-in nanny, and around Michael’s new Claim and April’s contentment.

When Michael took a second helping of chicken, Dean decided she’d had enough time.

“So, Cas, Sarah has something to tell you. Wanna hear it here or somewhere else?” he said conversationally. At the corner to Cas’ left shoulder, Sarah’s fork slipped, clattering against her plate noisily.

Cas wiped his mouth with his napkin, chewed, swallowed, and frowned in annoyance, addressing Dean instead of Sarah. “I have no basis by which to answer that question until you give me some idea as to the nature of the issue. Is it suitable for the dinner table?” 

“No.”

“Absolutely.”

They answered at the same time, and Cas turned to study the protégé at his shoulder. “Sarah?”

“We should discuss it later,” she mumbled with her head lowered.

“I’m intrigued,” Cas said, sounding fully invested and looking back down the table to his husband.

Dean shot her a look but chose the hardass route. “If it was anyone else in the Pack, they would know they don’t have a leg to stand on to hold out when an alpha calls them to account. She’s not talking because she’s an ape and she doesn’t really get it yet. Alpha, I suggest we disabuse her of that illusion.”

“Ah,” Cas replied. “Well, that gives me some context. I assume by _’calls them to account’,_ you mean you caught Sarah in an act of rule-breaking and wish her to confess.”

Sarah sank down into her chair a bit, and Cas responded without looking away from Dean by placing his hand on her elbow and stopping her slide.

Dean wasn’t finished talking. “The rule-breaking question is one I’m going to let you call,” he said seriously, scooping up the last of his rice. “But her reaction when I spoke to her was downright defiant, and as second-rank, I need you to clarify right here in front of everyone that you support my authority in this house. Does she or does she not answer to me as a full active member of the Pack?”

Cas nodded solemnly, and his jaw worked a little while he thought his response through. “Dean, you have my full support. You are alpha, and you are my number two.” He glanced around at everyone. A study could have been made of the reactions around the table. All of the Dominants were riveted and frowning. All of the Subs but Dean fidgeted uncomfortably. Gabriel reached across his wife for the serving bowl of rice and scooped himself another couple of spoonfuls, spilling half of the second in Kali’s lap.

Cas continued. “You absolutely have the authority to act within this Pack and expect to be obeyed. I won’t tolerate anything less.”

“That’s all I’m looking for,” Dean agreed with a nod. “And I still think Sarah needs to fess up right here, not later when she’s got a private audience.”

“It’s _personal_, Dean,” Sarah protested. 

“Alpha,” he corrected her with an authoritative tone.

“Alpha,” she parroted back, flustered. “It’s about my private health decisions, and it’s no one’s business but mine.”

Cas turned to her. “Are you ill?”

“No, sir. I’m not ill. I just… Can we please take this somewhere private?”

“Tell him, Sarah. Tell him or I will. If you’d wanted it kept private, you had that chance days ago.” Dean spoke like a man at the end of his patience.

She sighed and wilted. She faced her plate and spoke mechanically. “Dean found a baggie of tablets in the garage that I must’ve dropped on my way in this afternoon. He knew they were mine because he knew I was the last person in the garage.”

“Tablets?” Cas keyed in. “What kind of tablets?”

“Dean has the bottle.”

“You said they were in a bag,” Cas reminded her.

“I split the bottle into two portions so I could carry some with me and keep some at home.”

“I see. What are they?”

“Don’t I have a right to some level of privacy?” she tried valiantly again. “They aren’t illegal drugs, Alpha. I’m not on drugs. I have a prescription.”

Cas held his hand out, palm up, waiting to receive, and Sarah had no arguments left to try. She looked to Dean. He dug into his jeans pocket, produced the orange prescription bottle and tossed it the length of the table to her. She caught it, hesitated for only a moment, and then set it into Castiel’s waiting hand.

Cas oriented the label so he could read it and studied it briefly. “Why would you attempt to hide something like this?” he asked, genuinely curious. “We’ve been over the expectation that you come to me with your pharmaceutical needs. Surely you know I would have helped you with this?”

“I didn’t want you to know,” she answered sulkily, and Cas glanced up, switching his studious eye from the bottle to her face. Something about her expression gave him pause, and he wondered if he might be missing something, some interspecies disconnect.

“She told me I have no business searching her room,” Dean added. “Told me to stay out. Kinda freaked out on me. We need to clear that up too.”

Cas palmed the bottle, gave it a little more thought, and then quietly slipped it back to Sarah. “We do,” he agreed after a pause long enough to make Dean wonder if he’d been heard. “We most certainly do. Sam, I wonder if you might offer an opinion.”

Sam looked up in surprise and cleared his throat. “Oh. Right. Of course.” He cleaned his mouth with his napkin and then shrugged his shoulders a little in preparation to lecture. “It’s, uh, it’s an alpha’s right to get pretty invasive if he or she believes a Pack member might be up to something or in some kind of danger, Sarah. So, yeah, if Dean found unlabeled pills, and he believed they were yours, he’s got the authority to go through every inch of your room, your car, your desk, your bag, whatever. Seems like it’s really different for apes, huh? Maybe that point wasn’t super clear. Maybe we took a lot of it for granted that you would understand what we meant by Pack Custody and Pack Discipline.”

“So, it’s like being a perpetual teenager,” Sarah summed up with a clearly irritated tone. “Am I ever going to be trusted as an adult? Are you going to check my ass after I poop to make sure I wiped properly? Don’t I have the right to make adult decisions about my own health and wellbeing without an Alpha looking over my shoulder?”

“Not if you’re registered as an active member of this Pack,” Dean answered bluntly with his mouth full. He swallowed the bite and went on. “He’s Alpha, Sarah, and he’s also your personal physician. You shouldn’t be taking anything heavier than Tylenol without his knowledge. None of us expects to be free to do whatever we want to ourselves without getting his nod of approval, not even me – not even Cain. And I can’t figure out what the big deal is anyway. So you’re…”

“Dean,” Castiel cut him off. “Let’s stop there. We may not understand what has Sarah so upset regarding discussing this issue in everyone’s presence, but we appear to have touched upon an insecurity. We need to proceed cautiously, keeping her insecurities as protected as we do our own.”

“What’s to be insecure about?” Dean wondered. “Everybody’s got health concerns. Nobody else is hiding them. Hell, Gabe and Kali are upfront about having a hell of a time getting pregnant. It sucks, and it hurts, but it’s not shameful. It’s not hidden. How can the Pack lend support if no one knows there’s an issue?”

“I didn’t ask for your support,” Sarah said petulantly, clutching her bottle and done with dinner.

Cas put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “You’re likely to get it, regardless,” he commented dryly.

“Look,” Dean continued. “You think it’s embarrassing? You think that taking an anti-anxiety med makes you look broken?”

Sarah sighed hard and gifted Dean with a world-class bitchface.

“Dean, I told you to drop it.” Cas wasn’t pleased. He agreed with Dean’s assessment, but understand it or not, Sarah was flinchingly uncomfortable, and now she was outed.

She gave up deflecting and engaged in the discussion, sitting up and leaning into her crossed arms on the table. “Yes, alpha, it makes me look weak. Okay? Maybe not to you. Maybe not to wolves in general. But I can’t take that risk when there’s still a terrible stigma in the ape community and my chief cheerleader for my doctoral dissertation is also my personal doctor. People who need drugs to regulate their anxiety are seen as unreliable, overemotional, sketchy…at worst, mentally ill, and that’s a label that can stick to a person like glue for the rest of their career! There are apes on my panel, Dean! What if they find out? What if the wolves find out, and they aren’t as understanding as you are?”

“There’s not a wolf alive who gives a fuck what it takes to help you find your balance, Sarah,” Dean shot back fiercely. “Every last one of us is fighting that battle ourselves one way or another, and we’ve got emotions leaking out our pores twenty-four seven that are way more intense than what you’re juggling. You think it’s tough for you? You don’t know the half of it. So, go ahead and hide your pills. This is the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard of. Fucking apes, I swear! Fuck the panel, Sarah, you don’t hide shit from your Pack!”

“Dean, you’re excused,” Cas said firmly. “Please leave the table.”

“Me?!” he exclaimed.

“I instructed you to drop the matter for the moment out of concern for an insecurity that you and I needed to get to the bottom of privately. We owed Sarah that respect. Instead, you announced it to the entire Pack. That in no way nullifies my support for how you responded to the issue initially, nor does it excuse Sarah from her blatant defiance of your authority. But you’re being callously dismissive of her discomfort without making any effort to understand its source. That is unacceptable from an alpha in your position. I will speak to you in my office in fifteen minutes.” 

No one moved for several breaths. Then, slowly, Dean’s chair shooshed across the carpet as he pushed back. Dean set his napkin on his plate, piled his flatware on too, and carried his plate and his wine glass into the kitchen to the sink. He moved slowly, deliberately, rinsing and wiping and loading it all in the dishwasher before sauntering back through the dining room with his hands in his pockets.

“Damnit,” Michael muttered once he was gone.

Sarah exhaled loudly, an involuntary release of tension. “Michael, April, I’m sorry for stealing your thunder. This was supposed to be a celebratory dinner.” Sarah’s voice cracked. “I didn’t mean to ruin it.”

“Not your fault, really,” Michael muttered. “You’re still learning our ways.”

“And we still don’t understand yours well enough to avoid landmines, it seems,” Sam added sadly.

“So apes can really just do whatever they want, and no one has any authority over their choices?” April asked.

Cas laid his hand over hers on the table and she turned her curious eyes to him. He shook his head slightly.

Sarah didn’t notice their interaction. “Not just _anything,_ obviously,” she replied. “We have to obey the law. We have rules in our homes too. There are all kinds of customs and norms and conventions that people follow in order to fit into society. Some of them are clear cut and some of them are easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. It might actually be harder than just answering to an Alpha because there’s a lot about cultural customs that apes need to figure out for themselves.”

“Like not advertising a need for mood-stabilizing medications?” Kali guessed.

Sarah blushed. “Yeah. Everyone is expected to show a happy, confident, enthusiastic face to the world and not appear to have any weaknesses, especially in their professional or academic life. Taking antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds is a sure sign of a broken constitution. It’s worse for women. Men who look after their emotional health are seen as woke or evolved or something. Women are judged weaker right out of the gate. Add an emotional vulnerability to that, and good luck finding a job or winning any credibility. It’s really not like that for wolves? Come on. Surely, you have some unspoken cultural taboos.”

“Of course,” Cas responded, distracted as he tracked Dean’s pacing in the foyer. “It’s clear that ours are different from yours. Sarah, you have my apology on behalf of the Pack for not recognizing soon enough to prevent this mess that you felt uncomfortable divulging certain personal concerns to the Pack at large and to me specifically. Do learn from today though, that your defiance in the face of an alpha’s authority will not be tolerated. We’ve covered this more than once.”

“Yes, Alpha. Maybe we should go through it all again now that it’s become more real to me. I thought I understood, but I never dreamed that I’m not permitted to seek a doctor’s assistance on my own.” Sarah sounded resigned, and perhaps that’s the best Cas could hope for tonight. At least she wasn’t still arguing.

He steepled his hands, glanced around the table, and intoned, “We will meet your health needs, beta, all of them, but the hierarchy cannot and will not be ignored. As Alpha, I need to know about and to have advisory rights in all aspects of your care. I will refer you to other doctors as needed, but I won’t be cut out of the equation. You are expected to play an active role in determining what care you require and in seeing it through. We must be a cohesive team, you and I, but I reserve the right to the final say about what medications you put into your body. I’m aware that this reflects a shift in your conceptualization of your own personal bodily autonomy and that making it work will require an enormous amount of trust. I really must insist though. You are either mine, or you are not. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Alpha,” she replied. “May I continue to take the prescription? They’ve been helping.” Her eyes flicked up to catch his, and bravely, she held.

“You may. I will have your prescription transferred to a psychiatrist in whom I have more trust than I do that particular hack whose name likely came up in an internet search, and I will arrange an appointment for you to meet with her.”

Gabe and Jess had continued to eat, but everyone else was dejected. A pall lingered, and Cas didn’t know how to break it. He turned to April and gave her a tight smile.

“Can we revive the celebratory mood with some dessert?” he suggested.

April shrugged. “There’s leftover birthday cake from yesterday and there’s still some of Dean’s homemade ice cream in the freezer, but it won’t be any fun eating it without him.”

“I can’t stay for dessert anyway,” Michael added. “If I don’t get my face in a book soon, I’m fucked.”

“We need to get home, Alpha,” Sam put in, pushing his chair back. “Hank’s eye appointment is early, and we need to get the twins to bed.”

“May I be excused, sir?” Sarah asked in a small voice.

Cas gave it up for hopeless. “You may.”

“Do I have a punishment coming?” she asked once she was on her feet and gathering her own dishes.

“I need to confer with Dean,” he said. “I need his insight. He clearly feels you overstepped appropriate respect boundaries knowingly, and I will take that under advisement. My inclination is to leave you with a stern warning and close this unfortunate incident as it stands, but I may be swayed if he is adamant. I won’t keep you waiting, Sarah. We’ll speak again before bedtime.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll be in my room.”

“Gabriel,” Cas added as he stood. “You and April have the kitchen. I will be in my office. Everyone is excused.” Cas left the dining room as Kali promised Gabe to stay and assist in the cleanup. Dean was halfway through his pacing pattern in the foyer, so Cas gathered him up and escorted him into his office without a word. Dean positioned himself in front of the couch.

“You may sit,” Cas told him. But Dean didn’t, his brow furrowed in a look of deep thought. “Are you angry with me?” Castiel asked carefully.

“No, Sir. You were right. I don’t know what came over me. That was a shit thing to do.” Dean’s face registered the swift swirling of his mind. He seemed caught between his alpha designation and his front brain submissive. His eyes flickered from point to point restlessly.

Castiel sat down at an angle on his desk and mindfully lowered his energy. He spoke in a calm, measured voice. “You were right that we cannot make allowances for her forever. If she really wants in, then we have to be firm about what that means. She’s studied our species enough that continuing to fall back on an assertion that she didn’t understand is growing tiresome. No one else in this Pack would have been given that much leeway. She should be familiar enough with our rules to have understood both conflicts this evening. I really cannot account for her except that she seemed resolute that I not learn of her diagnosis, and that speaks of personal disquiet more than defiance. I’m at a loss because I don’t have a clear way to read her, Dean. I cannot tell for certain if she’s being argumentative as a boundary check or if she was truly caught flat-footed.” Cas watched Dean’s expression while he talked, but Dean wasn’t feeling belligerent any longer.

“You caught on right away,” Dean admitted. “I’m rethinking it all now from the angle of her being insecure enough to risk getting punished to keep her secret. Maybe she wasn’t defiant, Cas, just ashamed. And I dragged it all right out into the light like a dick and made her stand there naked in front of everyone. I pantsed her to prove that I can. That’s not the kind of alpha I want to be, Sir. I need your correction.”

Cas gave him a moment, then he softly added, “You didn’t hurt her on purpose, Dean….”

“Didn’t I? She defied my authority, and I responded by slapping back at her.” 

Cas continued with barely a pause, raising a finger to show he didn’t appreciate the interruption. “And you have as much at stake in maintaining your position in the hierarchy as I do. They do not maintain themselves, the strata. Call it a status check or call it a mistake. Either way, it wasn’t an intentional injury. Besides, none of us is entirely certain where our differences lie, one species to another – you maybe least of all considering you have spent the least time interacting with Primates.”

Dean shook his head, his thoughts turned inward. “No, maybe that’s true, but you weren’t watching for interspecies differences, C.J. You were watching her as a human. You saw that she was more than just unhappy at being called out, that she was mortified at being unveiled. I should’ve caught that. And even if I missed it, I should’ve trusted that you knew what you were doing when you told me to zip it. I should have obeyed you.”

“I’m proud to hear you say that, Dean. We make a good team when we have trust.”

“Yeah, well, I learn if you apply blunt force trauma to my brain…or…elsewhere.”

“What are you feeling right now?” Castiel asked.

“I’m anxious about getting my ass whipped,” Dean replied on the spot.

Cas snickered calmly. “What I mean is, are you feeling any closer to falling? I want it stated for the record that I don’t want you launching off of this minor incident and leveraging it into a full blowout. We’ll find another route. I want this closed tonight.”

“You think I control that?” Dean asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Yes, I believe you choose the time and place, and the motivational source. I understand that if you don’t act on your own, eventually the outcome will be taken out of your hands, but I don’t sense you being close enough to the cliff’s edge for that yet. I’m asking you to let this one go and choose something else. Sarah’s already humiliated. Let’s not make it worse for her by turning her tantrum into the spark that lights you on fire. If at all possible, can you push it off until after Christmas? Until after April leaves for Tennessee? I’ll follow your lead on the timing, Dean, but not this.”

Dean nodded, agreeing. “I’m not feeling it yet anyway,” he admitted softly. “I feel it building, but it’s got a lot more cresting to do before I can ride the wave. God, this feeling sucks. I hate this, Cas. I wish it would just fade out like a shitty mood. I wish I could run it out on the treadmill or punch it out on the heavy bag. I wish there was another way.”

“I know.”

“You gonna tell me I can’t strap the pretty ape?” Dean asked, changing the subject.

“Does she deserve it?”

“You want to let her off with a warning? She threw a full-on tantrum, Alpha.”

“I wasn’t there, Dean. I need you to tell me everything that happened, exactly how it happened, and we’ll decide her fate together. Let’s get your punishment over with first.”

“We don’t need a conference, Sir. You’re Alpha.” Dean unbuckled his belt, unfastened his jeans, and shoved them down as he rounded Castiel’s desk to lean across it in his usual position.

“I’m aware of that,” Cas told him as he took hold of the buckle of Dean’s belt and zipped it free of the loops. “But I also want the two of us to develop a shared approach to discipline. Talking things through should help us understand one another’s minds.”

“Help me understand yours, you mean.”

“However you choose to look at it. Set your feet, Dean, and hold on.”

“Sir,” Dean responded as he ducked his head.

Castiel started with his hand, as usual, and Dean winced, knowing the belt was coming. What that man could do with his bare hand caused sweat to break from his pores everywhere at once and bead at his hairline after only one strike. Dean focused on breathing, on feeling, on the heat and the pain and the immediacy and the present moment. He didn’t track the time, only the power and the intensity. 

Castiel wasn’t angry.

His palm hurt, but there was a measured moderation to what the Alpha doled out that told Dean Castiel didn’t believe all the blame rested on Dean’s shoulders.

Dean’s ass was hot pink and throbbing when Castiel switched to the belt, but he didn’t offer more than a moderate application with the leather strap. He was by no means gentle, sending Dean up onto his toes more than once, but the punishment ended after no more than twenty or twenty-five swings, and Dean was allowed to huff himself back to earth laid across Castiel’s desk with a hot hand stroking his back gently.

“That’s it, love. You may stand. You’re done.” He eased Dean up, watching the blood drain from his face and return it to its usual unstressed shade. There weren’t any tears. “You’ve earned a hug,” Cas offered with a smirk, holding his arms wide. Dean took the hug and then lay his head on Cas’ shoulder.

“You went super easy on me, Alpha.”

“You didn’t deserve more than I gave you.”

“Getting soft in your old age.”

“I love you too, Dean. Pull up your pants. Let’s talk about Sarah.”

“What, no more aftercare?” Dean bent to resituate his clothes.

Cas knew it was a joke, but he took it seriously anyway. Standing close and taking over the buckling of Dean’s belt from his husband, he told him. “I haven’t even begun to care for you this evening, my love. Are you all right in the interim? What do you need right now?”

Dean grinned. “Just you,” he answered unhelpfully and he kissed Castiel’s lips briefly, no more than a peck, before turning his back to the desk and scooching up onto it. “And your go ahead to let Sarah know I’m not fucking around. What was that you called it? A status check? Yeah, that’s what it felt like to me, Alpha. Felt like she isn’t sure what the boundaries mean and where they’re situated. I think she sees me as a buddy, not an alpha.”

“That’s unacceptable, Dean,” Cas agreed seriously. “And it can’t be allowed to continue.”

Sarah cracked the door when Dean knocked lightly, and her face fell.

“I figured,” she admitted. She stepped back and let him in.

He shrugged. “It’s straightforward consequences, Blake. I’m really not seeing how we could let you slide when you stand right in front of me and tell me I have no right to investigate drugs that you admitted were yours. I’m alpha, Sarah. Don’t let the naked morning kneeling confuse you. You’re not afforded privacy when you drop little white pills in your wake.”

“Fine,” she muttered.

“No.” Dean crossed his arms and stood unmoving beside the door.

Sarah considered him and then folded. “I apologize, alpha. I was disrespectful, and I should have known better.”

Dean waited until the air grew heavy with expectation before uncrossing his arms and taking a seat on the end of her bed. He regarded her, standing above him and looking anxious as hell. “I appreciate the apology,” he told her. “I owe you one right back. I was an ass back there, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you through that in front of the whole Pack. I’m hoping we can put this behind us and get back to what we have outside of disciplinary structures.” She nodded solemnly, but she didn’t answer.

Dean considered her. He drummed a thumb on his thigh to a rhythm in his head and he squenched his face up in discomfort. Finally, he broke the silence. “Can you tell me something? Did you know better? Honest answer, beta. Tell me the truth. Were you really confused or were you just hoping I would buy the hand fluttering and let you off without digging out your little secret?”

She thought about it, turning to fiddle with a half-empty perfume bottle on her vanity. “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t sure?”

“I will if it’s the truth,” he admitted.

“I still think like an ape, Dean. We’re raised to be independent. I don’t know how to turn myself completely over to an Alpha…or to his number two. Inside, I’m hearing so many conflicting messages about what _should_ be or what _is_, and I don’t always follow the voices that sound like Castiel’s.”

“Taking a strap when you make the wrong call will help with that,” he told her almost reluctantly, like he knew it was truth but wished there was a more effective way to drum it into her head. Conditioning wasn’t always a painless process.

She sighed and set the bottle down. “Is that what this is for?” She looked across at him, searching with her eyes.

He shrugged and seemed to be saying she could derive more than one benefit if she tried.

“Where do you want me?”

Dean scooted back and opened up a wider space at his lap. “Answer me one more thing first,” he interrupted her progress. He took her hand and held it, looking up into her face. “Why did you join us? Not some lame excuse about wanting to see it from the inside to help with your research. I want the real reason. You gave up your independence and you’re about to let me literally spank you like a child. Why on earth would you do that when you already have a family?”

Sarah sank down beside him. “Dean, I needed more help than just some pills. I’m a shitty adult when I have to run my life myself. I make stupid choices. What I managed to do to get to this point, it was all luck, other people leading my direction, and hanging on by my fingernails. My life should have come crashing down around my ears years ago. I don’t know why it didn’t. Pure luck and the Universe watching out for me, maybe. The point is, I was running on fumes when I met Castiel. I was faking every step I took, and I was one step away from the looney bin. He saved me. I struggle against the authority because I can hear my family in my head telling me to stand on my own two feet and stop being a burden – pretty much the opposite of what you and Cas tell me. Under this roof, I’ve started to feel like I really am the person I pretend to be. Maybe I gave up a lot to join the Pack, but what I get back is way more. You and Cas gave me my life back. If that means getting my butt smacked sometimes, that’s not really a tough choice.”

Dean nodded. “Maybe you’re not so different from us after all,” he observed with a shoulder nudge.

She smiled. “We’re still doing this?”

He laughed. “Nah, you know what? Let’s just forget it.”

“Really?”

“No. Up you go.” Dean helped her stand up.

“That was mean, alpha,” she protested, and he laughed again.

“Just keeping it real. You have a good ass-blistering belt for me?”

“I have to supply my own?” she asked in dismay.

“If you don’t have one, we can use mine. Kind of a custom to use the spankee’s belt, but it’s not a big deal.”

Sarah scowled and disappeared into her closet briefly. She returned with a simple strap of soft leather. Dean accepted it and looked it over. “No buckle?” he asked as he realized there wasn’t any hardware to it.

Sarah blushed crimson. “Adam bought it for me to use on him. We’ve been trying out some light impact scenes.”

Dean laughed and set it beside him on the bed. “That’s my girl. Okay. First off, tell me what you did to earn my visit here this evening. What rules did you break?”

Sarah took a deep breath and rubbed the sweat off her palms onto the legs of her jeans. “I broke Rule Three,” she told him. “I was disrespectful when you asked me a question…several times.”

“Mm-hm. What else?”

“Rule Five?” she asked uncertainly.

Dean prompted her. “How did you lie to us?”

“I hid what I was doing,” she confirmed. “Lie by omission?”

“Is that a question?” Dean challenged.

She sighed again. “No. It’s not a question. I was lying by omission. I knew that if Cas learned I’m on those pills, he would want to look further into it and take ownership of my prescription. He’d start keeping a closer eye on my emotional state. I hid it from him on purpose.”

“Good girl. What else?”

She licked her lips. “Rule Two, maybe. I’m not as sure about that one. I didn’t take the decision to Alpha, but taking anti-anxiety medication isn’t unsafe, inherently. He told me I can keep taking them. I didn’t break Rule Two, I don’t think.”

“Agreed,” Dean conceded. “Is that all?”

She frowned, thinking it over. “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”

“Go back to the top, Sarah,” he advised. “The first rule in the list. What does it say?”

Sarah swallowed. “It says be obedient to the Alpha.”

“That’s correct,” Dean praised. “Were you disobedient to him directly?”

“He instructed me to bring my health concerns to him,” she admitted softly. “And I went around him because I thought he would be ashamed of me.”

Dean didn’t answer right away. He studied his fingernails, letting her ruminate.

“I disobeyed him,” she concluded. “I told him I had no problem with him serving as my doctor and then I panicked and went to someone else without telling him. If he had been unclear about how he wanted my medical choices to be handled, I could say I didn’t understand, but he went over every detail with me. I knew hiding meds wasn’t going to be allowed. Yeah, I knew.”

Dean leveled a sympathetic look at her. “How does that plan look now?”

“Stupid,” she told him. “I feel stupid for thinking I couldn’t take my worries to him.” She wrinkled her face up in embarrassment. “That’s the whole reason I joined the Pack, alpha. I wanted support strong enough to hold me up when I falter. And the first sign of faltering had me hiding it from the people who are there to help me.”

He nodded and patted his lap. “That’s all I needed to hear,” he said. “Shed the blue jeans and mount up. This part is easy. It’s negative reinforcement – classic conditioning. I’m going to help you make a different choice next time by associating an unpleasant experience with this choice. Capiche?”

Sarah rolled her eyes at his informality. But she slipped her jeans and panties down and laid down across his lap. He turned her so that her upper body was on the bed, and he put one leg over her calves. He cinched her in.

“Thirty with my hand. Fifteen with your belt. You ready?”

“No, Sir.”

Dean rubbed circles into her back. “Take your time, Sarah. Let me know.”

She took a monumental breath that raised her ribcage under his hand, and she nodded.

“Don’t worry about counting,” he advised. “I gotcha.” Dean set to work. Holding her tightly helped them both. She wasn’t accustomed to taking swats, and she hadn’t been over anyone’s knee since she was a little girl. It was humiliating on top of hurting, and she sobbed more in mortification than anything else. He reached thirty at an even pace, taking his time and giving each slap a chance to set in and burn before aiming the next.

Sarah blew a hard breath out when he finally reached the end. He stood her back up and then changed places with her, bending her over the end of the bed and standing beside her.

“Gotta do this next bit on my feet. Can’t swing a belt well from a seated position. You ever had a strap before, Sarah?”

“No, alpha,” she whimpered into the bedspread. “Not until now.”

“Okay, well, it stings pretty hot, but it won’t last all night. You’ll wake up good as new, so this is all about feeling it right here in the moment. Give it your full attention and don’t shut it out, and it’ll do what it’s meant to do. This isn’t about making you feel ashamed. It’s about setting pins in your memory to remind you next time you start to make a choice like that – not to. Answer my questions as I ask them.”

“Questions, alpha?”

Dean struck her ass with the belt, doubled in his hand. She shouted and clutched at the bedding, but she didn’t get up.

“Do I have the authority to question your actions?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir,” she answered.

He swung again.

“Do you have the right to hide your medical or emotional needs from your Pack Alpha?”

“No, Sir,” she replied gruffly, clearly speaking through clenched teeth.

He swung again.

“Are you going to defy any alpha in this Pack when they ask you straightforward questions?”

“No, Sir!” she shouted.

He continued through fifteen slow, miserable strokes, demanding answers between each one, and driving his point home the hard way.

After fifteen, he sat beside her and rubbed her back, catching her wrist and stopping her from easing her own sting. He helped her up and let her pull her clothes back up, and then he stood with her in an intimate embrace, almost swaying, tightly contained while she sniffled.

“We’re lucky to have you, Sarah,” he said in a tone that promised more than she dared to believe in. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of everything you’ve learned and how you adapted. There’s no way in hell any of us would be strong enough to try something as scary as leaving everything we know and joining a new family in a whole different species. You’re a far stronger person than you give yourself credit for.”

She nodded and sniffled again. 

“Wanna go get some ice cream?” he offered. “It’s about that time when Michael raids the freezer. You could join us?”

She shook her head. “No thanks,” she murmured. “I need to go to bed. I have a lot to process.”

“All right,” he said. “You think it through. Try not to rub. I’m leaving you to it, and no one’s going to checking to see if you keep your hands off, but letting it settle in can be a powerful experience. Give it a shot for me, would’ja?”

She huffed. “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask.”

“Alpha, I’m really sorry. Truly.” Sarah stood awkwardly in the middle of her room, wondering how to explain. 

Dean didn’t need an explanation though. He smiled kindly at her. “I’m sorry, too. We were bound to need an adjustment period,” he told her. “Once you cotton on to the nuances, you’re never going to break a rule again. I can see your brain working on it from here. We’re going to be good for you and you for us. Don’t sweat it. We’re done here. No hard feelings. No lingering resentments. We all let it go. I forgive you. You forgive me?”

“Yes, sir,” she said with a shaky smile.

“Come ‘ere.” Dean pulled her in for one more hug and then left her to change for bed feeling far better about her than he had before dinner.

Dean quizzed Michael with a rapid-fire barrage of questions, and Michael snapped answers out like a skeet-shooter taking out clay targets. Coming on the heels of writing out a near-flawless outline of the chapter by memory with occasional hints and nudges from his mate whenever he got stuck, Michael was sharp. It was getting late though, and they couldn’t continue much longer.

Dean called a break.

“Let’s grab a snack,” he suggested. “I got sent away from the table before I finished my supper. I know there’s chicken left over. Come on, Michael. Quick break and some protein for stamina. Then we’ll take one more pass at it and call you ready.”

“Yeah,” Michael exhaled. “Good. One more pass. I think I’ve got it. If I could only keep the spleen, gall bladder, and pancreas straight, I’d feel way better.”

“Two totally different body systems, man. Now, stop. No more test talk until we leave the kitchen,” Dean commanded, tugging his mate to his feet and shepherding him in for a snack. “Tell me about Claiming April. She said you went into the Dream wide awake. What happened, man?”

Michael grinned a secretive smile with his eyes down. He took a stool at the island while Dean rummaged through the fridge. “I can’t explain, Dean. I don’t know what happened. April asked me to give it a shot while we had the afternoon to ourselves. I was thinking it over, and my psycho asshole wolf came sniffing all up in my business. I confronted my wolf because the bastard thought it’d get a chance to slip in while I was busy working out the details. My Tertiary has never looked twice at Pete as a person. He doesn’t care one way or another, but if there’s a Claim to be laid, he expects to lead it. It’s like a notch in his headboard. I couldn’t let him in on that, alpha. It’s private.”

“He’s a psycho asshole now? I thought you were proud of your wolf. But how did you get immersed in the imagery, anyway?” Dean asked. He loaded a couple of chicken portions on a plate and topped it off with scoops of cold sticky rice.

“No idea,” Michael told him truthfully, ignoring the reference to his new irritation at his own wolf. “One minute the sun was shining and I was beneath the big tree out back. The next it was midnight, and I was in a deep forest somewhere, walking on four legs and circling my own wolf. The whole contest happened inside my head, in that wolf-scape. He was his usual pushy self, and except for having fur and a tail, I was me in my front brain, only, I think I was powered by my Omega. I’m not a hundred percent sure. I felt ancient, Dean, like I had infinite resources and I’d been around forever in that forest. And I could feel my eyes change to gold. The Omega wasn’t there, but he was feeding me somehow – like, shoring me up.”

Dean took a stool beside Michael’s. He left the food cold, and he set the plate between them to share. He scooped some rice up with his fingers and popped it messily into his mouth. “You were two separate wolves?” Dean asked before he swallowed.

“I had to have been,” Michael answered thoughtfully. “I couldn’t see much of the body my cognitive mind was in. I could feel it though, and it wasn’t human. The flashes I saw, when I curled around or turned quickly – my body looked just like his. I think it was just the same. Pete said my eyes were golden though, and his glowed bright blue.”

“Wait. April was there too?”

Michael chuckled and took a bite of cold chicken. He chewed for a moment and then answered, not attempting to hide his pride. “Her wolf jumped in to fight beside me.”

Dean gaped.

“Yeah,” Michael continued, studying his chicken, turning it over in his greasy hands. “Pete said her Primary and Secondary stayed put out in the sunshine, but she could see blurry visions of her Tertiary jumping in to help me win. And, Dean, her wolf is stunning; holy shit.”

“You saw her wolf? Like, really, truly _saw_ the beast itself?” Dean stopped eating and faced his mate, shocked.

Michael grinned and ate a clumpy bite of rice with his fingers. “She’s got fur the color of her actual physical hair. Her wolf is blonde, Dean. Ever seen a blonde wolf before?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It was wild, the whole experience. It was a knockdown drag out brawl, and my own wolf seemed like he wanted me dead. I was bleeding from wounds all over my body. He was either trying to kill me or make me prove I deserved to Top him. He wasn’t playing. Pete showed up outta nowhere and hit him with Ninja guerilla tactics, jumping in and snipping at him from all directions and then tucking out before he could respond. She was brilliant. I’m telling you, I can’t explain. It was crazy.”

“April’s wolf is Submissive,” Dean remarked, dazed and lost in a whirl of thoughts.

“Doesn’t mean she can’t fight,” Michael told him. “I feel like she was acting under my wing, like a soldier in a battle I was leading. She was still Submissive, Dean, but she is a hell of a soldier, and her being there made a huge difference.”

Dean frowned and picked up his own piece of chicken, turning it over in his hands. “So… The two of you ganged up on your wolf.”

“Her wolf and my Primary,” Michael clarified. “Weirdest fucking experience of my life. I couldn’t see the real world at all. I have no memories of what happened during that time for real. I lost about twenty minutes of real time, Dean. Pete had the better view. She said she was mostly outside with blurry flashes and a sense of what her wolf was experiencing. You should ask her for the details from the outside.”

“So, you defeated your wolf…” Dean nudged.

Michael grinned again. “That asshole isn’t taking April,” he told his mate confidently. “She got him all turned around with her darting in and out from everywhere. And I buried my huge fuckin’ teeth in his shoulder and put him in his place.” Michael giggled. “Dean, man, I Dominated my own wolf. Claimed him like an Alpha would. Shoved his face into the dirt and fucked him stupid.” He began to laugh harder. “God, I wish I could have filmed it. I wish I could show you. He is _not happy_ with me at the moment.” Michael took a celebratory victory bite.

Dean marveled and shook his head, hardly able to imagine it much less believe it. But Michael wasn’t lying, and Dean could feel a shift from within him. Michael’s wolf was sulky and distant.

He ate in silence for a bit, mulling it over. “So, you Topped him, kenneled him, and then Claimed April without him breathing down your neck trying to nose in?”

Michael set his chicken bone on the plate and wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm. “No, Dean. I Claimed Pete while I was still buried to the short and curlies in my own wolf. It happened in the real world while it was happening to him in the wolf-scape. I never Claimed April. I Claimed my wolf, and the Claim that I shot at him landed on her and stuck.”

Dean shifted backward in surprise, stunned to the marrow of his bones. “I don’t get it,” he said at last. “You Claimed her without touching her, without even targeting her?”

Michael shook his head vehemently. “No. No. Not entirely. I definitely touched her. We fucked, man, only I wasn’t there to see it. I didn’t attack or fight Pete. I checked her over afterward. Dean, I thought that at first my physical body must’ve mimicked the actions in the real world that I was doing in the wolf-dream, but she’s unhurt, and she says none of the battle made it outside of my head; just the mounting and the fucking and the Claiming. That part was real. I didn’t see it. Had no idea. Missed the whole thing. Pete says she thinks my Omega felt a Claim building and took advantage of it, got us both situated for the Claim to have something to land on in the real world when I sent it out within the dream. I think she must be right, although even from my Secondary I have no memory of it. I opened my eyes still hard and still rocking her channel. And the Claim was fresh and pulsing – doing that weird tingly thing they do right at first. The Claim’s real. The rest of it is confusing as hell.”

“You’re tellin’ me,” Dean added. “What the fuck, Michael?”

“I dunno,” he admitted. “But I don’t think that was the first time I’ve ever battled myself or Dominated myself. This feeling right now, of my wolf kinda pissing its bad mood off into dark places to lick its wounds and talk itself back up again – this feels like somewhere we’ve been before. I control him all the time by snapping at him in my head, but that’s just a sense, not a real image. Sometimes when I wake up after vivid dreams that I can’t remember in detail, I’ve felt like this. Never happened with full wolf imagery while I was awake before though. And I’ve never seen another wolf in the flesh but you before. We were both there at the same time, Dean, both me and Pete. Neither of us was unconscious, and we both saw it.”

Dean chuckled and ate a little more rice before feeding a handful to Michael. “It took my alpha and Castiel’s working together to topple his wolf,” he remembered. “I guess it’s not that far-fetched to think our designations might all have access to the wolf-scape under the right conditions. I know mine and his were in the same dimension at the same time for that. And sometimes when we get really intimate, you and I, I can almost see our wolves touching noses or playing together. It’s like it’s just out of my peripheral vision, like if I turn my head quick enough, I can see it.”

“Mm-hm,” Michael agreed. “But going there as a Primary,” he said in wonder. “Dean, that’s the key to getting to see it for real and keep the memory of it. Wherever our Primary mind is is the part we keep as memories. We do that when we dream. Apparently, if I’m motivated enough, I can do it when I’m awake.”

Dean peeled off his stool and circled the island to dump the bones and rinse the plate. From her pen, Portia thumped her tail hopefully. Dean washed his hands and dug a dog treat out of the cabinet for her, scratching her ears affectionately while she crunched it up.

“Is the memory getting foggy?” he asked Michael. “Fading at all like dreams do?”

“Not really,” Michael told him. He washed his own hands, reading into Dean’s discomfort. “I guess once I sleep on it, I might lose a few details, but now that I’ve talked it over with Alpha and April, and now with you, I’m certain I’ll remember most of it. Cas told me to wait until my test is over tomorrow and then write it out like a journal entry. Dean, he’s going to want to explore what happened, not just as Pack Alpha, but as part of our in-depth research interviews. You’re going to be okay with that, right? It’s still just talking. No probes.”

“I’m not okay with it, man. I just don’t have a rational reason to put a stop to it. I know every argument for doing the interviews and for driving down into the meat of what your brain is capable of. I know that stuff. But it still makes me nervous. What happens if they find a loose thread and start tugging on it through these interviews but they can’t quite get a grip without turning interviews into exams? Where does it stop if they really get going on something pivotal? What would they do to you, Michael? Jesus, I want to trust Cas to put the brakes on if it comes to that, but I’ve seen him when he gets close to a breakthrough.”

Michael embraced his mate, wrapping him in solace. “We’re not going to let them hurt me,” he reminded Dean. “You need to let me do this, alpha. If it comes to needing a CAT scan to watch my brain engage, alpha, I’m going to say yes to that. We need to understand.”

“I know,” Dean agreed reluctantly. “Promise me you’ll be careful. Don’t let them any deeper into you than I signed off on. This feels like a slippery slope, man. A CAT scan? Really? We need to discuss everything before it happens so no one gets carried away.”

Michael snickered. “You think someone’s going to slip a probe up my ass without my knowing?”

“Damnit, Michael. I’m serious. Any alpha in the research department could pin you Secondary and convince you they have a hierarchical right to override your objections.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dean.” Michael pulled out of the hug and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Don’t get pissy on me,” Dean warned. “It’s a very real vulnerability. They have an advantage, and I’m not convinced they won’t try to intimidate you into letting them do something we told them not to if they get excited enough.”

“You think I would be intimidated into rolling over when I know you’d flay me for it? Dean, I’m on your side here. I’m asking you to trust me and Alpha both. I’m asking you to let us explore whatever this is and find some answers. Hell, come with me to the interviews!”

“Can we not talk about this anymore?” Dean asked irritably. “You need one more run through of all three systems before bed. It’s late. This test needs your focus. Come on, man. Endocrine system. Go.”

Michael nodded in acquiescence and followed Dean toward the stairs, reciting as he went…

“Pituitary, adrenals, thyroid, parathyroid…”

April was fast asleep on her side in the big bed with Kat still nursing grumpily in a half doze. Cas closed his book when Dean and Michael crept in. He worked himself to sitting upright and accepted a warm kiss from Dean as Michael reached across April to collect their daughter. He rearranged April’s nightshirt and pulled the blanket up to her shoulder. Kat turned into Michael’s chest with an irritated snuffle and sleepily began to follow the scent of milk at his chest. 

He lifted her to his shoulder and patted her back soothingly as a distraction.

Dean took the pup, kissed Michael’s cheek, and sent him to bed with a gesture.

“See if you can clear her nose,” Michael whispered. He slid between the sheets beside April, snuggling up close to her and pulling a pillow in under his head and punching it a couple of times. April murmured and rolled to face him, scenting for his throat in her sleep.

“Do you want any help?” Cas asked Dean before he left to settle the cranky pup.

“Nah, I got her,” Dean whispered back. “Be right back. She’s nearly out.”

Castiel shuffled back down into the softness of warm bed and embracing Pack. He clicked his lamp off and set his book on the bedside table before shifting into the middle with his mate, leaving Dean a space on the edge. April was deeply sleeping, but her body wasn’t entirely still, responding to the closeness of her new Claimant with a gentle, sleepy pulsing roll from her hips, as if seeking one more connection. Michael rolled with her, not connecting fully. Cas heard him sigh in contentment as the Omegas sought each other in Castiel’s bed.

Cas turned onto his side, giving them a trace of privacy and touching his mate only at the outermost curve of their backsides and the soles of their feet. He could hear his husband through the monitor beside his lamp, murmuring soft assurances to Kathleen as he laid her down in her crib. Everything felt soft and tempered, and Castiel half wondered if he was dreaming already.

Dean returned swiftly, having settled the pup with no issue, either from her stuffy nose or her bad temper. He slid straight in and wrapped warm arms around Cas. In no time, he’d rolled his back to his husband, snuggling in the Alpha’s embrace, and Cas found his nose pressing into Dean’s scent glands. The Omegas both fell still behind him, and the house settled into peace.

Dean was warm in his arms.

“It’s still ‘Yes’, my love,” Cas whispered, uncertain Dean was still awake to hear him. A squeeze to the Alpha’s forearm and a slight pressure as Dean angled his head back into Castiel’s told him he’d been heard. “Just in case you were wondering.”

Dean huffed gently and then fell asleep.

Cas breathed in the scent of Pack…

…and followed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope each and every one of you is safe, healthy, protected, and secure. I hope that if you are isolated in your quarantine, that you are reaching out and finding others to connect to. Isolation is the enemy of sanity. Don't let the bastards get you down. Chime in, folks...Is everyone okay?
> 
> I am behind in responding to comments, but I'll catch up. Every comment is important to me. 
> 
> Love to all of you.


	9. Christmas Tuesday, December 25, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a Winchester Pack Christmas. There are toys and gifts, a lot of food, a lot of family, (too much family?) and a couple of heart-wrenching falls. Needless to say, there's such a thing as kicking the can too far down the road. April is easy, if intense, but Dean... Dean has steam leaking from his ears and no easy way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I followed a barrage of four chapters in four weeks with a longer wait than usual. Turns out I've had a bit of a Winchester-level fall myself, and it took a good two weeks for me to claw my way back out of the pit. Not an actual fall, but I was on a scary downward slide into a worsening health condition and it took good drugs, a declarative diagnosis, and a month off work to stop the descent. What this means for my future, I don't know yet. None of my choices are easy ones. But managing a chronic disorder while continuing to work 12-hour shifts that rotate weekly from night to day and back again doesn't seem feasible if I don't want to end up right back where I was headed.
> 
> So, it took me a bit to get my brain back into working order. It had skipped a few tracks on me there for a bit. But I'm back now, and pounding out words, and feeling so much better.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter. It's angsty, but ultimately healing, and it's long...cause fuck it. Why not?

Naomi sat regally in the plushest chair in the parlor, holding court as the Pack shifted about her, ignoring her for the most part. Wrapping paper littered the floor everywhere, bows and ribbon and bright shiny new toys made a disaster of the normally ordered space.

Michael quick-walked across in front of Naomi on his knees, scooping Alex up just as the pup reached for an ornament hanging low enough in the tree to grasp. Michael chuckled and kissed his son’s throat playfully, distracting him with Portia’s antics and a bright red fire truck. Alex bowed his back and struggled in his mother’s grip, determined to have another go at the Christmas tree with its alluring lights and prickly branches.

Portia pounced and flattened another wad of discarded wrapping paper, earning full-throated chortles from Kat who tumbled over backward.

At Naomi’s feet, Jimmy edged closer and closer to the mysterious woman whose scent spoke of family, but whose demeanor remained aloof. He crawled closer in fits and starts, emboldened one moment and shy the next, until he sat right at her feet with a stuffed giraffe in one hand. He risked a glance up at her and found her studying him in turn. Intrigued, Jimmy displayed his toy for her to examine, an offer he’d found universally won adults right over. But Naomi only lifted an eyebrow at the youngster’s gall.

Perplexed, Jimmy sat down on his diapered bottom and tilted his head in consternation, working out what he’d done wrong. Behind him, his Papa laughed and swept him up into a hearty hug before depositing him unceremoniously into his grandmother’s lap.

“James, kiddo, you remember Grandmother. She’s visited before. She won’t bite,” Cas told him, kneeling down beside the chair and bracing the pup with a hand on his back. Naomi had not moved except to lean slightly away from the pup, stiffen uncomfortably, and remark, “He’s barely out of the womb, and he’s already got that absurd, pretentious head-tilt down.”

“He’s my son, and it’s endearing. Mother, for goodness sake, don’t be mean. He’s clean, fed, and he’s well-rested. You’re not going to get a better chance than right now to try to bond with them all just a little. He’s your grandson! Talk to him!” Castiel’s frustration was evident, but Naomi was impervious. She set her jaw and looked away, her eyes fogging over slightly.

“We can try again later, Cas,” Dean told him softly. “She’s not home at the moment.” Dean’s hand twitched on Castiel’s back. He was holding onto himself, but it was becoming a struggle.

Cas sighed and lifted the puzzled pup to his shoulder, admiring Jimmy’s giraffe and stealing it away to begin a playful game of nuzzle-the-pup with its soft faux fur. Dean’s need would have to wait until Christmas morning’s festivities ended. Now was not the time.

All around, except for Naomi, the Pack, still mostly in their pajamas, giggled and played. Portia entertained them all with her antics. Gabe and Jess batted a wad of crumpled paper around raucously, playing an impromptu game of ‘Keep it off the Ground’ that threatened to trample tiny bodies until Michael made them take it into the foyer.

April sat on the floor, leaning against the couch, cuddling Emma and sharing a scone with her daughter. She felt a bit thunderstruck in the aftermath of the assault on the Christmas tree, and in the mess that remained, April was uncharacteristically quiet. Emma was too.

Dean plunked down heavily onto the floor beside her, crossing his legs Omega-style before him. He offered her a sip from his freshly poured coffee, which she accepted before resting her head on his shoulder. Dean cinched her in with a soft smile, sipped carefully, and watched the chaos continue around them. He had to lift his mug clear when Idgie shuffled from Mama’s lap into Daddy’s. The pup turned her back to his chest and settled into the gap between his legs. Dean kissed the top of her head without a second thought. Pack scents thickened around them all, sending their unconscious minds a signal of comfort and safety. Dean breathed out an unsteady breath, tightening his grip on his alpha.

At the tree, Michael swooped back in heroically and saved the harried ornament one more time, much to Alex’s frustration. The pup wailed, eliciting patient chuckles from his parents. Michael foisted the squalling pup off to Sam and began stripping ornaments off the lower boughs of the tree to eliminate the draw. Hopefully. A full month this tree had been right here in full reach of his short grasp, and it wasn’t until this morning that Alex made a break for the breakables.

It was picturesque and joyful, just as Dean had needed it to be. He tightened his arm slightly, hugging April close, communicating his appreciation for all she’d done, even through her own exhaustion, to bring this morning to fulfillment. Christmases past held a golden, vintage glow in his mind, haloed by selective memory that ruthlessly deleted the uncomfortable parts. Dean remembered finding his first bicycle propped beside the family tree one year – a far cry from the rugged mountain bike that sent his mother into a hazardous industrial sweatshop when Dean was nearly grown – just a little red two-wheeler with training wheels already attached. He couldn’t have been more than five years old that year. He remembered Sammy pulling himself to standing with his pudgy hands woven into the spokes while Dad braced the bike with one large hand, a proud grin on his face.

Dad had been an edifice, a fixture to Dean back then. He was enormous and implacable. He was immutable. He was strong and permanent and reliable. His laugh shook the rafters, or would have done if their house had rafters. His scolding face could take Dean apart without his ever speaking a word. His presence bought their family safety, surety. He was the very essence of stability. Or…he _had been._

He was gone now, and all that surety dribbled away years before he died, leaving behind a husk, a void, where power had once lived, a vacuum that bewildered his oldest son who’d grown up trusting that alpha could never be toppled.

There was a touch of John in Castiel, and Dean wasn’t blind to that. They both carried their power as a birthright. They both eschewed flexing their power until truly necessary. They both trusted themselves to draw others beneath their wings and lend strength where it was needed. Neither of them shouted unless fully provoked and even then, only when a full-throated roar brought about the end result they looked for – never just to flex, never to posture. They both had a tenderness to their touch that was as healing as a mother’s caress.

Dean blew gently across his coffee’s surface and sipped again, mindful of his daughter below his chin.

“Merry Christmas, Dean,” April said placidly.

“Merry Christmas, kid,” he answered back.

Naomi pushed herself awkwardly upward out of her chair and stuttered to the tree, shuffling her feet through the remains of countless opened packages, shifting brightly colored paper as she walked. She’d fallen into the haze of a marbled mind, and she wasn’t present in the present any longer. She stopped before the evergreen, squinting up toward the glittering angel at the top, her gaze still unfocused. She looked baffled with her brow drawn down, something amiss that she didn’t seem capable of putting her finger on. She reached out and caressed a glass orb that shone with reflected light, her fingertips just nudging it gently.

At her feet, Alex stumbled up and wrapped his arms in her dressing gown, clinging on and tugging adamantly.

“UP!” he demanded.

Naomi looked down. Her gaze cleared as she focused on the presumptuous child.

Dean shifted, ready to intervene, but April stayed him with a hand on his shoulder.

Naomi blinked down at the dark-haired child whose parentage showed so dramatically on his face and in his mannerisms.

“You’re not mine, little one,” she told him fatalistically. “Are you? You’re one of his.”

“Mother,” Castiel admonished gently. “Alex is your grandson. Remember our rules. I won’t tolerate unkindness. You promised.”

Naomi blinked at her son and then back down at the impatient boy who had begun to tug persistently at her robe.

“UP!”

Michael spared her. He lifted Alex, stepping in close enough to show him the brilliant round ornament that had transfixed his grandmother. The Omega placed a warm hand on Naomi’s shoulder and graced her with a smile just as warm. “Look with your eyes, Ace,” he instructed, “not your hands.”

“Michael,” Naomi mumbled, seeming confused. “The child favors you, doesn’t he?” She reached out and straightened Alex’s hair where it fell across his brow, much as Michael’s often did. “How odd.”

Michael chuckled, unconcerned at her bizarre state of mind. He kissed her cheek and patted her shoulder. “He looks more like his Daddy than me,” he said. “He’s got my hair, but the rest of him is Dean.”

“Dean?” she asked, blinking and looking round to fix a bewildered eye on her nemesis still sitting uncomfortably on the floor. “I don’t understand. Why would he resemble Dean?”

Michael patted her shoulder again, but he didn’t offer an explanation. She wouldn’t remember anyway. Her dementia was worsening, taking more and more moments from her during each day, stealing her memory and her thoughts. At least for the moment, she spent those fuzzy episodes in a soft puzzlement rather than a frightening confusion. Her temper had eased, her razor-sharp caustic cutdowns vanished with the fog when it descended, much to the Pack’s relief. She had grown unexpectedly gentle in her dotage rather than bitingly mean.

She was still in there, to be sure, and she could struggle her way back to the surface unpredictably fast and slap an insult that no one saw coming onto anyone unwary enough to approach when she was out of sorts. All except Michael. She never had a harsh word for Michael.

Cas watched her shifting demeanor with a cautious eye. He’d long assumed that people under the clutches of dementia tended to revert to their base personalities, and like Dean, Cas assumed that for his mother, that would mean she turned even nastier as her rationality slipped away. But she hadn’t.

Befuddled, certainly. But not intentionally hateful.

Cas had discussed her involvement in their pups’ lives exhaustively with Dean. Michael and April both expressed trust in their alphas’ decisions on the matter, and that left the weight of the decision on Dean. Dean was wary, but as long as Naomi behaved harmlessly, he agreed there was value in allowing her to play a tangential role in the children’s lives. Time was on their side. Naomi’s unwitting remarks that could have painful repercussions later – remarks about parentage and which pups were her _real_ grandchildren – would most likely disappear as her mind sank further and further from her reach, hopefully vanishing altogether before Alex was old enough to understand them.

Cas chuckled at his mother’s confusion, not unkindly so much as a recognition that they could go in circles for hours if they began trying to explain it to her all over again. He took Alex from Michael, hoisting the boy up onto his shoulders and offering him a better view of the top of the tree. Alex’s eyes glazed over with reflected light and awe. He was enamored with the colors and the lights and all the intricacies of the various ornaments.

“Papa!” he exclaimed, pointing up at the angel on top.

April laughed. “I _told_ you the angel looks like Alpha,” she jibed. “Alex agrees with me.”

“As it should,” Cas said imperiously. “I have the best view from up there. I can watch over all of you, keep my eye on your shenanigans.”

Sarah stepped up to his shoulder with her eyes on the tree topper and her head tilted. “Not to mention the stick up its ass,” she noted jovially.

Laughter from every direction drowned Castiel’s rebuttal, leaving Sarah the uncontested victor of the exchange.

Flummoxed at being so close to the tree and still stymied from touching it, Alex began to cry in earnest. Kat looked up at him from her game with a brand new set of rings, and she couldn’t bear her brother’s sadness. She burst into tears to join him. In Dean’s lap, Emma rubbed her eyes hard and then turned into his chest as she too succumbed to sobs.

“And that’s our cue,” Dean commented dryly, clutching the little girl and pushing himself to his feet. “Naptime first or nursing first?”

Cas brought Alex down from his shoulders and jounced him gently in comfort. “They’re probably hungry. Only Jimmy ate more than a token breakfast.” At the mention of snacks, J.T. and Hank both emerged from the foyer and toddled across the littered space to their father, hopeful.

Kali rolled off the couch she’d been half dozing on and scooped Kat off the floor, engendering a full wail from the pup who wanted nothing to do with her aunt whatsoever. Kali wasn’t bothered. She led the way into the kitchen and strapped Kat into her chair at the end of the island. Michael busied himself plating out a hefty snack for all six pups, joined by Dean once Emma sat belted into her own chair beside her sister. The two of them competed for volume, losing patience rapidly. Alex joined them, his face red with anger. Little Jimmy sat wide-eyed in Uncle Gabriel’s arms, clearly wondering what the fuss was about.

“Merry frikken Christmas!” Dean shouted in jest over the noise. Cas kissed his husband’s temple on his way past.

Dean squeezed Cas’ shoulder in return and then focused back on his work. “All right, all right, keep your pants on! It’s coming! Jesus! Fucking tyrants, all of you!”

“Language, Dean,” Michael scolded. He filled a sippy cup with juice and handed it across to Alex who batted it away, sending it flying. Luckily, the lid didn’t pop when it landed. Sam collected it from the floor and handed it back to Michael placidly then buckled Hank into his own chair at the main table. Michael offered the cup back to Alex with a calmness that Dean found difficult to match. Michael raised one finger and both eyebrows as his son met his eye. “You get one warning, young man,” he chided. “If you want the juice, hold onto the cup. I’m not giving it back again.”

Alex went still, snuffling softly. He held his hand out and took the cup by its handle. With a somber expression, he stuffed the soft drinking tip into his mouth and inverted the cup, sucking hard.

“That’s my good boy,” Michael praised warmly, running fingers through Alex’s thick hair.

Second breakfast calmed frayed little nerves, and the Pack was soon back to an even keel. They lingered at the table, peacefully enjoying each other’s company and the simple joy of fellowship in a home where everyone felt valued.

Cas emptied his third cup of coffee in no hurry. He had J.T. and Jimmy both snuggled on his lap, the former helping himself to _’Ow-fa’s’_ plate, and the latter slipping into a doze with a bottle of warm milk that his father held firmly for him. Looking about, Cas was amused that most of the pups had found comfortable laps but only Jimmy sat with his own parent. Cain had Alex, the pup still grouchy but mollified with a full belly. Kali had Emma. Kat most assuredly had Sarah rather than the other way around. And Gabe was teaching Hank to tie shoelaces, most likely so that his next lesson could be to teach the boy to tie Sam’s laces together under the table. The pup was far too young for a skill that complex, but Gabe had Hank’s complete attention. His focus was vague, but his hands were nimble.

Cas found himself assessing the Pack as they chatted amiably, a little drunk on mimosas and heavy carbs. He didn’t miss Dean’s shifting shoulders or the way his husband continually scratched at his throat and face as if bothered by gnats. Nor did he miss April’s poor posture and downcast eyes. April would be easier to rebalance. All she needed was intense fiery pain, a chance to scream and struggle against her bindings as he set her aflame and drove her into gales of emotional tempest that burned every imbalance to a crisp.

That was what Cas was born to do, and he planned to see to her early in the afternoon, after lunch when most everyone was either out visiting friends or napping.

Dean, though. Dean caught Cas watching him from the opposite end of the table as a wave of nausea passed. Dean lifted his head out of his hand, sitting back up straight after swiping a thin layer of sweat from his brow and looked up to see a worried frown watching him right back. He looked away, reaching across the corner of the table to clean Emma’s chin unnecessarily of the ever-present drool that foretold another tooth on its way out.

Cas watched him silently, noting that Michael’s attention was as focused as Castiel’s. Michael had a hand on Dean’s thigh, and he was massaging tense muscles.

“We should go clean up,” Jess suggested, breaking the soporific lull. “We need to get home soon and put these two down for a nap. It looks like the North Pole exploded in there. I’ve never seen such a mess.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Naomi scoffed with a sip from her delicate China coffee cup. “The staff will clear the mess away.”

“The staff has the day off, Mother,” Cas reminded her coolly. “It’s Christmas for Primates too.”

“You are a strange excuse for an Alpha, son,” she told him sadly. Her disappointment leaked out around the edges, and Dean growled softly.

“Let’s set to,” Cas announced, sliding J.T. to his feet on the floor as he stood up. He took the toddler’s hand and led the way out of the kitchen with Jimmy asleep in his arms. “The faster we get started, the sooner we’ll finish.” Cas settled his son in the portable crib in the corner and covered him with a blanket before directing J.T. to begin gathering crumpled paper.

Portia followed the Pack back into the parlor, thrilled to be allowed to snuffle and pounce back into the mess until April corrected her and sent her to her pillow. The fluffy dog obeyed, albeit grudgingly, and Cas gifted his mate with a radiant smile, proud of her evolution into parental maturity. She rolled her eyes and held a bag out for him to deposit paper into.

The cleanup went quickly. Soon, toys and other gifts were separated and stowed or packed away into cars.

“You sure you won’t stay?” Dean asked his brother as he carried a pile of boxes out to fit into Sam’s trunk. “The Andersons will be here by dinner. They’ll wanna see you.”

Sam chuckled. “They want to see the twins, Dean. They don’t give a rat’s ass about Jess and me.”

“Whatever. They’ll be disappointed if you don’t show.”

Sam shook his head and closed the trunk. “I need to get Jess home, man. She’s skipping tracks on me already. If I put her off any longer, I’ll have a full tantrum on my hands. We’ll try to be back for dinner. I have to wait and see if she settles or not.”

“You’re just going to leave me alone, then?” Dean asked in an oddly strangled voice.

Sam frowned. “Alone? Dean, the whole fucking Pack is here.”

“Sammy, I…” Dean fell silent awkwardly and then leaned right into his brother’s warmth, burying his face in Sam’s coat with his arms hanging listlessly beside him. “Please don’t go,” he said in a muffled voice, pathetic in his pleading.

Sam laughed softly and wrapped his arms around his brother’s forlorn form. “I’m not leaving, Dean. I live a couple miles down the road. You’re fine, man. It’s not me you need anyway. Hang in there just a little longer. They’re not going to leave you hurting.”

“No one gets me, Sammy. My skin’s flaking off. Look.”

“Your skin is fine, dude. It’s just a sensation. Go back inside and tell Michael how you feel. This is a classic pre-Rut fall for you. You’re okay, I swear. Come on. I’ll walk you back in.”

“I don’t wanna!” Dean asserted dogmatically. He dug his heels in. “Naomi’s in there!”

“Dean. Brother. Breathe. Okay? Naomi is heading home soon. And besides, she’s irrelevant. She can’t hurt you. Your mate and your Alpha need to take care of you now, not me. Don’t be scared. You’re not in any danger. All those scary sensations are false, remember? Come with me.”

Dean balked, but Sam set his shoulder into his brother’s back and forced him forward. Once moving, Dean shuffled toward the house on his own power. His hands began to tremble, and his eyes lost all light.

Halfway to the house, Michael emerged through the front door at a jog.

“It was fast this time,” he observed to Sam as he took up Dean’s other side and put a guiding arm over his shoulder. “He was alpha not five minutes ago.”

“Well, he’s anything but alpha now,” Sam agreed. “I’ll get Cas.”

But Cas was already there, framed in the doorway as the three of them climbed the porch steps and Dean grumbled childishly about people speaking over his head. Cas pointed them to the right, into the first room with seating, the Omega calling room, and Dean collapsed mutely onto the floral sofa.

“Dean?” Cas probed. He sat down beside his husband and looked deeply into his eyes. “Can you answer me? Do you hear me?”

Dean closed his eyes and panted. He gripped Castiel’s hand with his left hand and Michael’s with his right. The Pack crowded the doorway in consternation.

“What is this?” Michael asked Castiel. “Panic attack?”

“It’s a fall, Michael,” Cas answered without looking away from Dean’s blank eyes. The alpha’s pupils were tight, barely pinpricks in the middle of his iridescent green irises. “What can you feel from him?”

Michael coaxed Dean into leaning back against him, rubbing his arm and clasping his hand. “He’s swirling, sir. I can’t pinpoint his conscious mind. I don’t know where he is right now. How did he fall that fast? Why did he lose his footing? I thought he had control of how his falls play out?”

Cas stood up and stripped his robe off, wrapping it around Dean’s shoulders. The man was shaking as if terribly cold. “I can’t answer those questions yet, Omega. We need to focus on helping him out of this first. I fear we delayed him too long while we sought the perfect avenue for him to overflow into. It’s caught up with us. Here, help me get him on his feet. We can’t do this here.”

“Where are we going?” Michael asked. “Downstairs?”

Dean clutched at them both and resisted being pulled to his feet, but between the two of them, they got him up.

Gabe appeared at Michael’s shoulder. “Take him to my room,” he offered. “It’s the only bed on this floor. I don’t think you should be doing stairs with him like this.”

Dean gave a great backward lunge and pulled them all off balance, scattering them like popcorn. Castiel’s expression firmed, and in one smooth motion, he lowered his shoulder and lifted Dean bodily across his back in a fireman’s carry. Michael goggled as Dean’s struggles proved completely fruitless. The Alpha rarely put the entirety of his substantially superlative physical strength on display, as it was rarely necessary, but Dean was having none of it, and Cas had no choice but to knuckle down and carry him. Michael spread his arms to guard those in the doorway from taking a stray boot to the face. He kept his distance as Cas tackled the stairs, clearly deciding that his own bedroom was the best option.

Dean made a grab for the bannister as Cas hauled him bodily upward, but he couldn’t get hold. All of his substantial struggling was for naught.

“Papa?” Alex called, climbing up onto the first step before Kali picked him up and carried him back into the parlor.

“Gabriel,” Cas called down over his shoulder. Dean landed a hard knee in his gut, and he grunted but didn’t slow or falter. “Would you and Kali please watch the children for me? Cain, I need you to keep an eye on April for a couple of hours. You’re in charge. Michael, you’re with me.”

A subdued chorus of affirmation followed him as he disappeared down the hallway.

“Such dramatics,” Naomi observed coolly. “In my day, adults behaved like adults, not children.”

“Put a sock in it, Mother,” Gabe groused. “Nobody gives a shit about your day.”

Michael sighed and touched April’s shoulder. “He’s going to be okay, Pete. We’ll make sure.” He shared a quick look with her and then followed Cas up the stairs.

“Be careful, Michael,” she called. “He’s not himself.”

Michael disappeared, and Cain wrapped bracing arms over April’s shoulders, leading her into the parlor with the rest of the Pack.

“We should go,” Sam mentioned. “Hank, pick up your duck and take your brother’s hand. J.T., you’re leading. Don’t let him fall.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“Jess, take the boys and get them loaded up. I’ll be out in a minute.” Sam didn’t wait for her reply. He took Cain aside as Jess fitted both boys into their coats. “Michael was supposed to take Naomi home,” he reminded the alpha. “The last time Dean tanked this fast, it was Naomi who set him off. She needs to be gone before they come out of that room. Should I drop my troops off at home and come back?”

Cain shook his head. “I’ll see to it,” he answered. “If Sarah can’t drive her, I’ll have Gabe do it. We’ve got this, Samuel. Go home and relax. Merry Christmas to you.” He squeezed Sam’s arm and gave him a solid nod, firm and resolute.

“Merry Christmas,” Sam answered by rote.

By the time the front door closed behind Sam, Sarah already had the matriarch dressed in her coat and ready to go as well. Cain shepherded them toward the garage entrance, saying, “Thank you for joining us this morning, Mrs. Novak. Sarah, take Castiel’s car. She’s most comfortable in the Lexus. Don’t forget the plate of cookies for her to share with her neighbors.”

Farewells were short, abrupt more from distraction than distaste, but no one gave two thoughts to Naomi’s offense at being shuttled out the side door when the Pack needed to circle up. April gravitated to Cain, looking for support, and he gave it easily. Kali walked wide circles around the room, gentling Alex with soft, slow passes by the blinking lights and festive baubles. At length, he rested his head on her sharp collarbone, seeming not to notice the shortage of padding, and he closed his eyes with a thumb in his mouth.

Gabriel stood over the crib, watching the triplets sleep, taking his assignment seriously.

They settled to a waiting stillness.

“I’m glad you joined the Pack,” April said unexpectedly, snuggling into Cain on the formal sofa.

“Are you now?” he asked, teasing a little bit.

“We needed you,” she replied. “I needed you. It feels like we’re complete now. Just think how stretched we’d all have been if Dean fell like that and we didn’t have you to keep the rudder straight. Cas would have been too distracted to focus. He would have worried about me the whole time. Or Gabe. Now he can give his full attention to Dean, just as he ought to.”

Cain smiled grimly. “I’m more than happy to oblige, my brilliant little ingénue. My older sister had falls just like Dean’s when I was too young to assist, and it was just the four of us in that house. I admit that it feels far less precarious with a house full than it was for her back then. I think your mate is on to something momentous in trying to reinitiate large, stable packs. A nuclear family isn’t enough.”

April wiggled in tighter, encouraging him to tighten his embrace. “Now that we’re complete,” she said airily, “it’s time to concentrate on finding you a mate.”

Cain huffed hard enough to stir her hair. “That is a dead end street, young lady. Mind yourself. It’s none of your business, and I’ll not have you digging about meddling in my affairs. If I wanted a mate, I would have Mated.”

She glanced upward, searching his face. “Who was he, then?”

“I’m not a widower, April. Leave it alone.”

“Did he die young?”

Cain’s thumb repeated a slow, thoughtful circle on her arm as he disappeared into his own head.

“He left me,” the alpha said after a long pause.

“You were planning to Mate?” April pressed.

He nodded brusquely. Then he took a deep breath and extracted himself from the sofa and her clinging. He stood in front of her, facing away. He scratched his brow with one thumbnail. Finally, he turned. “This was some years ago, you understand, before I had anything to do with young artists like you. I once made my living very differently than I do now. He asked me to find a new line of work. Said he found the violence abhorrent. Said he couldn’t fathom that I found anything noble about what I did for money. He asked me to swear I would stop…killing. And I couldn’t make him that promise.”

“But you did stop,” April finished for him. “You turned to a completely new line of work.”

“I did,” he agreed. “But not before Colin Mated someone else. Everything that used to seem important to me turned to ash in my hands. I chose blood and death over life and love, and I’ll never forgive myself.”

“What was it that you did back then? Were you an assassin?”

“I don’t talk about that time in my life any longer, April. It’s behind me, and that’s where it belongs.”

“Castiel knows,” she guessed, and he nodded. “And Gabriel.” April caught Gabe’s eye from across the room and the man looked swiftly away.

“And Gabriel,” he agreed.

“And they both approved of you joining the Pack. Whatever you were doing couldn’t have been illegal or they wouldn’t have let you near me.” She held his eye fiercely, desperately.

He chuckled. “Not every law is a just law. Legality is a false front, lass. Don’t assume the world is black and white.” His statement held a finality that told her the subject was closed. Following April’s glance, Cain turned and shared a look with Gabriel that told April she would get nowhere by pestering either of them.

But she didn’t need to. She had learned what she needed. She was peeling Cain open like an onion. It was all beginning to make sense. April made grabby hands, and he graced her with a patient look before fetching a soft blanket and tucking her in across the sofa.

“Get some rest while the little ones are sleeping,” he instructed. “I won’t be far. I’ll be in the kitchen tidying up.”

She gloated at him from beneath the blanket, and he shook his head, collecting Gabe.

“Why do I suddenly feel like I need to watch my back,” Cain asked rhetorically.

Gabe laughed. “Alpha, if that’s a new feeling, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

**************

Cas dumped Dean into the middle of the bed, but he didn’t leave him free to shimmy his way off. Cas stripped him of his clothes and bound his wrists to the bed frame in short order, securing him fast with his hands cuffed out to either side and ensuring he couldn’t hurt himself. Dean sat twitching in the middle of the bed, jumping at nothing. Cas snapped his fingers in Dean’s face.

“Dean, I know you’re scared, but you’re safe, alpha. Calm down. No one’s going to hurt you. I need you to look me in the eyes and breathe with me. Calm down.” Cas shifted his head as Dean fought frantically to avoid meeting his eye. Michael slipped in and closed the door. He shed his clothes and climbed onto the bed behind Dean to brace him, lending him the solidity that Dean had lost.

Dean threw his head back into the crook of Michael’s shoulder and clenched his eyes tightly closed, whining high and desperate.

“Dean, open your eyes and look at me,” Cas continued calmly. “I need you to look at me, baby. Open your eyes. What you’re feeling right now is a delusion, Dean. You’re not in danger. You’re safe. Look at me and see for yourself.”

Dean scuffled frantically in his cuffs, scrabbling for a way out of whatever hell was in his head.

“Michael, can you hold his arms? He could dislocate a shoulder struggling like that. Good. I want you focused inside your bonds. Dive deep and see if you can find where he’s hid himself. Try to coax him back out. Something’s terrified him.” Cas pulled his cotton pajama shirt over his head, skipping the unbuttoning altogether in favor of getting bare skin available faster. He pulled up onto the bed and straddled Dean’s thighs, leaning in close and letting his chest bracket Dean between his mate and his husband.

Dean wasn’t going anywhere, and he panted in panic.

Cas shushed him calmly, running his wide, flat palms along Dean’s ribs and massaging his torso in long, firm sweeps.

“Talk to me, love,” Cas whispered. “What do you see?”

Dean whimpered.

“You’re safe, Dean. I’m here. I’m not going to let anything hurt you. Tell me what you’re afraid of right now.”

Behind Dean, Michael’s eyes were closed. He had Dean’s arms pinned in a way that allowed very little movement but didn’t pull harshly against the cuffs bound to either side of the bed. Michael began a gentle rocking motion, bringing Dean into movement with him. He tucked his face into Dean’s throat, an embrace so intimate they moved as one.

“Michael is right there with you, Dean; right beside you in your head. And I’m right beside you out here. You’re not alone. We’ve got you. I need your eyes, Pet. I need you to come back to me. I need you to trust me. Follow my voice and come back to me now. I’m never going to let anything hurt you.” Keeping his voice steady was a herculean task, but Cas leaned into his wolf, and he held.

Dean’s hand splayed open by his thigh, and Cas took it, interlacing their fingers and squeezing. Dean’s breathing grew deeper then shifted to hard, short puffs through his nose, and then his eyes shot open.

“Castiel!”

“I’m here, baby. Look at me. Breathe. Slow it down.”

“Cas!”

“Shh. You’re safe, my love. Tell me what’s happening in your head.”

“Whole world’s on fire, Alpha! Michael! Gotta get him out of there! Cas, help me!”

“Baby, Michael’s okay. He’s safe. Everything you’re seeing is delusion. I need you to trust me, and come back up to the surface.”

Michael was frowning hard in concentration. “Alpha, he can’t find anything solid to grip. He’s just swirling around in there like the ground fell out from under his feet. And he isn’t made of anything I can grab hold of! He slips right through my fingers! Damnit! Dean!”

“This isn’t working,” Cas decided. “Help me get him on his belly. We need to give him something he understands, something solid to hold onto.”

Cas unclasped the cuffs, and they repositioned the alpha onto his belly. He struggled desperately the whole way, only falling still when Castiel’s hand crashed down on the back of his thigh. Dean’s eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t seeing anything – not anything real anyway. His mouth fell open and he huffed short, quick, helpless breaths. His body fell supremely still as Cas delivered pain, simple and hot, a lifeline to a psyche lost within itself.

“Keep doing that,” Michael urged, his focus still turned inward. “He can feel it. It’s like a window out of the chaos. That’s it, Dean. Follow the heat. That’s it. You can do this!”

It seemed to take forever. Castiel’s bond was useless. He could feel Dean’s pain and desperation, but he couldn’t see anything. He had no view of the maelstrom in Dean’s head. He searched frantically for an echo that might allow him to experience what Dean did, but there was nothing but chaos and motion and heat. Cas had no ideas but to keep striking Dean’s body in search of his mind. He had no signal to follow but Michael’s assertion that it was working.

He felt utterly helpless, and he struggled with his own fear.

Not now, Novak! Take care of the patient first. Fall apart later!

His training shored him up, years of crisis management through the most horrific scenes imaginable. His hands, his body knew what to do even as his emotions tried to turn on him. Dean’s thighs and butt had turned a blazing red, torn in a few places where Castiel’s wedding ring cut at the skin. When had he switched hands? Cas was not a leftie. He realized he had released Dean and was wailing on him with both hands, willing him to find a way to use the pain as a foothold out of the depths.

And then Dean gasped and flailed, pressing his chest up with both hands braced against Michael’s shoulders. He sucked in air exactly as if he’d been inundated and nearly drowned.

“Stop!! Stop! Goddamnit, stop!!” Dean flipped over, protecting his ass by rolling onto it and taking hard, painful gasps of air.

Castiel found himself weak and trembling. He had tear tracks coursing down both cheeks.

“Dean, thank the Universe!” He lunged forward and gathered Dean in his arms.

Michael collapsed backward to lean exhausted on the wrought iron headboard. His hands never left his mate’s back, but he closed his eyes in relief.

In Castiel’s embrace, Dean began to cry, great wracking, painful sobs.

“Let it go, baby,” Cas soothed. “You’re okay. Let it go. We’ve got you.”

Dean was quiet in the afters; somber, ashamed. Michael curled into him, spooning closely. Michael didn’t speak at all. But Cas needed answers, even if Dean was reticent to give them.

Cas faced him, on his side in the big bed. He carded his fingers through Dean’s hair.

“That was something I’ve never seen you experience before, love. It wasn’t a panic attack. It was deeper. Has that ever happened before, ever that you remember?” he asked gently.

Dean looked away. Cas waited a bit and then prompted. “Dean, I need to understand.”

Dean’s voice was gruff, hard-used, when he spoke. “Coupla times, maybe,” he finally answered without looking at his husband. Michael’s arms tightened around Dean’s chest. “Years ago. When I was a kid.”

“Can you tell me what it felt like?”

Dean gathered himself, and sighed. “What d’you want me to say? It feels like swimming in a lake of fire and watching my flesh crisp off in layers. It feels like dissolving into a pool of acid where there’s nothing solid to hold onto.”

“God, I’m so sorry, baby. Are you still hurting?”

Dean huffed softly. “My ass throbs like a son of a bitch, Alpha.”

“From the fire, Dean,” Cas clarified patiently. “The acid. Can you still feel it?”

Dean ducked his head again, clinging to his mate’s arms and shook his head. “Only in my memory. I can remember what it felt like, but it wasn’t real. I know it wasn’t. It was my own brain burning out the rot, cleaning up the garbage. Was all in my head, Cas. When you hit me, that was real, and I could tell the difference. I could hold onto that and…sort of climb it, climb my way out. Damnit, I’m not making any sense.”

“Shh, yes, you are.” Cas let the silence lengthen for a moment. His bonds with Dean had gone still too; calm, still, peaceful. Soft. Trusting.

“Last time you experienced this fire,” Cas began again softly, noting the wrinkle between Dean’s eyes form as he braced himself for another tough question. “Who brought you out? Was it your father?”

Dean shook his head slightly and whispered, “Sammy.”

“Your brother pulled you out?”

“Mm. Sammy’s the only one who’s ever seen me like that before. Pretty sure it scarred him for life. Not surprised he hightailed it home when I got clingy just now. He doesn’t wanna have to drag his loser brother outta the muck all the damn time.”

Cas frowned. The language and the outlook were all wrong for the far side of a fall. Dean was still trapped in the mind of a derelict little boy, his self-esteem battered and his sense of guilt overwhelmed. Whatever Sam had done, fleeing having to face Dean’s fall wasn’t part of that picture. Sam was probably pacing in worry at the foot of the stairs. Or he had felt that reducing the overwhelming houseful of people at the height of Dean’s vulnerability would ease the pressure on his brother.

Cas pushed his torso up so that he had a height advantage. “Did you just call yourself a loser, Dean Michael?”

Dean sighed tiredly. He closed his eyes and rubbed them with one stiff finger. “Yessir,” emerged somehow from lips that didn’t seem to move. Castiel’s mind worked feverishly.

“Dean, what’s going on? Do you know? Was it having my mother visit?”

Dean sighed and sat up. He sloughed off the lingering Tertiary brat, but he held onto Michael’s hands. He frowned and wrangled at it, working out how to put it into words.

“Nothing to do with Naomi, Cas. From the outside, it must have looked the same as that humiliating panic attack she dragged me into. But it’s not the same thing at all.” Dean paused and bit his lip then regrouped and went with stark honesty. “I’m not done with it yet, Alpha. The fall. This was just the pressure valve blowing. It was like a little part of it that leaked out from being held in too long. I should’ve just gone with my gut and tumbled days ago, but I’ve been holding it back, looking for a way to blow off without hurting my family, without spoiling Christmas. Cas, there’s not a way for me to do what I need to do and keep all of you safe.”

“That was a _little_ part of it?” Cas asked in dismay. “My god, Dean.”

Dean looked across at him and reached for his hand. “It doesn’t happen this way if I lean into it. That’s why you haven’t seen it before. You always gave me space to blow out. This was like an explosion that hits all the harder because it boils up under pressure and has no relief valve. Normally, I send all the pressure out into whatever ploy I think up. I give it a steam vent. This time, it built up inside me until it had nowhere to go, and my brain exploded. I’m okay for now, but there’s more in there, still boiling around, building pressure. I need to get it all out, man. But I don’t know how. What am I gonna go flip another table? Set April’s piano on fire? Drive my car through the back wall of the garage? What’s it gonna take this time?”

Cas kneaded Dean’s palm with his fingers, massaging every muscle. “Dean, you know I’ll hold you steady while you release the pressure. I can take whatever you dish out. You don’t need to hold back. There are ways to express rage safely.”

Dean shook his head sadly and looked down at Michael’s somber face, green eyes blinking up at him. “I opened up that Pandora’s box inside my head, and I got a good look inside,” he explained. “And now I can’t pretend I don’t understand how my mind works. I explored too deep. Don’t you get it? The roleplays only ever worked while I was still able to fool myself. Now that I know what was behind all those stupid stunts, wrecking your car, getting drunk and blowing off midterms, flipping the fucking kitchen table, Cas that shit won’t work anymore. My Tertiary needs something _real_ or it just scampers happily around thinking it’s playtime. Every round that we go through this, the volume gets turned up a little higher, a little riskier, a little more dangerous. Damnit, Cas, last time I fucking blindsided you on your fucking birthday! Don’t tell me that didn’t hurt, man. I know you covered for it cause you figured out I was blotto, but I can’t keep blowing holes in your hull. What’s next, huh? And after that? And then after that? Am I gonna have to draw blood eventually?”

“Dean, Dean, baby, breathe. We can think of something if we put our heads together.” Cas sounded adamant, but Michael had gone pale.

Dean leaned toward Cas. “We tried that already, man. You set me up for an awesome roleplay. Had me so pissed I nearly walked out on you in the playroom, and I’ve _never_ done that before. I wasn’t playing around, Cas, I was fuckin’ livid. And then you pulled me down by my short-n-curlies and you peeled my skin off with that fucking medieval cat-o-nine. And for a while we both thought it had worked, that my fall was over and done with. And I was so fucking relieved, thinking all I had to do from now on was tap you or Michael on the shoulder and clue you in that there’s a fucking storm brewing in my head. But it didn’t hold. And you know why? Because my fucking wolf wasn’t fooled. He knew it was a roleplay even though you pushed all the right buttons. There’s feeling it, and then there’s _FEELING IT,_ and we didn’t fool him for a minute, man.”

“What do you need to make it real, Dean?” Cas asked, worried he knew the answer already.

Dean sighed and dropped his head back to stare upward. “I need to break something, C.J., something meaningful, valuable, irreplaceable, I dunno, something real. And then I need to face you in all your fury or your…that distance thing you do where you get cold on me. I need to feel like the bottom might actually drop out on me for real. I need to feel that fear that I might have actually gone too far this time, and then I need to pay whatever price there is to pay to win you back. Don’t you get it? There’s no way this doesn’t just keep getting more and more outta control. And the more therapy I do, the more I understand about how I work, the harder it is to fool myself.

“It was way easier when I doubted that you love me.”

“Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, crumpling. “I know.”

Cas pressed a kiss to his lips. “We’ll figure something out.”

“I’ve been over it and over it, searching for some way through this round, and I can’t think of a thing that doesn’t put the Pack at risk. Cas, I don’t want to break anything. This is my home, my family. It’s my Pack, damnit, and we’ve worked so hard building it up. I can’t do something that tears it all down again. God-fucking damnit! I don’t wanna keep hurting _you_ over and over again for the rest of our lives! I love you, Cas! I can’t see a way out!”

“Dean, love, I know you’re scared, but when have you and I ever faced any monsters that we couldn’t defeat together?”

“What are we gonna do?” Dean asked in despair as he rolled into Castiel’s arms. Cas caught him and shifted his weight so that Dean was still pressed into Michael as well. Michael sat up a bit, embracing his mate from behind and pressing his cheek into the middle of Dean’s back. Dean hunched over Michael’s arms, allowing the two of them to hold him upright. He fought the need to cry. What good would tears do?

“I don’t have an answer for you yet, Pet,” Cas told him firmly. “But one thing I know is that there’s no subverting your nature. We aren’t going to get anywhere until we learn to ride the rapids through whatever canyons your psyche throws in front of us. I’m grateful that you’re searching for a means to feed your wolf without laying waste to our home. I need you to believe that we can find you that relief valve. We’ll figure this out, Dean. And I want you listening to me through your wolf right now. This is important. Pet, I’m never going to abandon you. I’m never going to stop loving you. There’s nothing in the world you could ever do that would lose you your Pack or your home. But you listen to me, Dean Winchester. I won’t accept anarchy or mutiny from within my own Pack. If you defy my authority, break my rules, throw chaos in my face, I _WILL_ hold you fully accountable, and you will fall rapidly and thoroughly out of my good graces until such time as you make full amends. Is that clear? Is your wolf listening? It’s no less real if the consequences are you sleeping alone for a month. You will make restitution to me for your missteps, or you will suffer under my boot until you do. Answer me. Do you understand?”

Dean’s breath caught. He blinked a couple of times, working it out, finding the elegant pathway through to a place that would allow his wolf its sense of penitence without needing to fear losing his family altogether.

Cas was a frikken genius, wording it like that.

Dean nodded.

“In words, Winchester,” the Alpha corrected staunchly.

How did he always know just what to say to clear the fears away? It wasn’t a solution, but it was solid enough that Dean felt he could stop treading water and rest while he searched one out.

“Yes, Sir,” Dean said.

“Good,” said Cas with a trace of a twinkle in his eye. “Let’s go rescue Cain from my mate before she chooses him a mate and names all of his children. Up you go, Michael.”

“Sir,” Michael asked as Cas hauled him to his feet. “Do you think your mother is still here? It would be best if I take her home before Dean goes back down.”

“I can check. You two get dressed and wash your faces. The Andersons are due by supper time. We need to turn out for them. Dean?”

“Sir?”

“We’re going to figure this out. I want you to trust me. Can you do that?”

Dean thought it over, still bare before his Alpha. “I trust you, Cas.”

“Thank you, love.”

“You’re not steamed at me for keeping it to myself?”

Cas kissed the tip of his husband’s nose. “It makes sense to me that if you’re searching for a way to kick my feet out from under me, that you wouldn’t be forthcoming about that. And I haven’t missed the worrisome consideration that the more we expose the process, the less likely we are to find a fulfilling path through it. Your wolf, Dean, is a canny and irresponsible fellow. He’s not going to be easily taken by surprise. But that stunt you pulled turning my birthday dinner into an orgy did blindside me, and it did hurt. I’m all for finding routes that are satisfying without being hurtful. No, I’m not angry with you. I get why you kept it to yourself. I’m very proud of you for the way you opened up, even if it sets us back to square one in finding a solution. At least now, the three of us can work on it together.”

***************

As he’d predicted, Cas found that re-setting April’s feet was a piece of cake compared to Dean’s. The two of them worked up a slick sweat together in the playroom. Cas produced the bullwhip, fixed her with a forceful red-eyed glare, and set her screaming. He experienced a jarring, mid-scene moment of lucidity that brought his mind and his psyche into painful counter step, but he soldiered on, repressing the feeling of absurdity that wielding a whip could be anything but wicked. Cas squeezed his eyes tightly closed, stepped back two big steps, coiled his whip in his hands, and huffed his headspace back where he needed it to be. God help him if his concentration faltered while his mate was so vulnerable.

Before him, bound spread-eagled on her bare feet, April waited, shivering. She turned her head a fraction, but within their bond, she was solid. Trusting.

Castiel pulled from his Tertiary, let the blood course through his chest and quicken his senses, and he firmed his resolve. Only a moment it had been, but his breathing heaved as if he’d been sprinting.

“Two more, Submissive,” he growled. “Hold for me. Don’t move a muscle. I need…” He swept the sweat from his eyes, and he re-set his feet. “I need… Don’t move. God help me, I need to hurt you. Scream for me.”

April’s fists flexed and tightened on her handles. Her hips shifted slightly as she dug her toes into the cushioned floor. Within their shared bonds, she was solid, offering freely everything he despised himself for wanting to wrest from her. Her wrists were cuffed, but the cuffs were a flex of power, not a necessary binding. She would hold still for him for as long as her body had the strength. She’d long since Released. She was stable and fixed within her head once more. April was complete. All that remained was to bring Castiel up to stand firm beside her.

He blinked sweat from his eyes, and his wolf roared merciless in his head, and the whip flew, marking his slow climb from a pit he hadn’t known he was in. The lines across her back gave him rungs to grasp as he hauled himself bodily from the depth into which he’d slid.

“Goddamn, you’re incredible,” he muttered softly. “Look at you.” Cas shifted his feet again, feeling the rush of endorphins sweep through him. “Can’t believe you exist and you’re right here, right here for me. Hold…Hold, baby…I love you so much.”

His whip snapped, popping one final time across her back, and shuddered as she screamed to the ceiling, a sound that no one heard but her mate. It was his, that scream, and he swallowed it whole, feasting on her pain like the ravenous beast he was. Castiel abandoned humanity for a time, abandoned sentience and morality and caution. He slaked his thirst for blood, for violence, lapping at her screams with a growl in his throat.

When his vision cleared, he was pressed bodily against her, moaning and thrusting his hips ridiculously, mouthing at her Mating-scar as she trembled before him. With great intent, Castiel slowed himself. His breath, his body, his mind all shifted back toward the realms of the human, and his mouthing softened to gentle kisses. The red-pink tone of his vision faded, and the thrumming in his ears waned.

Castiel assessed.

April had been easy to re-set back to balanced.

Cas himself had been somewhat more of a challenge.

April tilted her head backward into his jaw in a nuzzle, and he returned the simple pressure.

“Let’s get you lying down,” he murmured softly. “You need bandaging.”

“Will you knot me, Alpha?” she asked in her most helpless waif-like voice, having herself given entirely over to her wolf. “I’m spinning.”

“First-aid first, love,” he answered. He unclipped her wrist cuffs and caught her up, lifting her off the floor with a mind to not hurting her enflamed back more than necessary. Once he had her horizontal and all of her wounds catalogued, cleaned and bandaged, he stretched out beside her, caressing her gently and basking in the afterglow.

April smiled and touched his face, still floating in a cloud that kept her feet off the ground. She watched him for a few moments and then frowned. “You dropped out of the moment, Sir. Are you back now? Are you all right?”

Cas kissed her palm. “I’m fine, April. Momentary lapse. Not a drop. I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all. I didn’t pull you out of your headspace, did I?”

“No, Sir. No complaints. It’s been a long time since we did that, and it was as powerful as I remember. I feel electric right now.”

He smiled that soft, gentle, adoring smile that was April’s and hers alone. And he chuckled. “What would I do without you? Is there anything my wolf might want to do to you that you would ever protest?”

“I’m not fond of amputation,” she teased.

Cas made a resigned face as if he’d been considering the idea, and April laughed and swatted his shoulder. “So?” she posed. “Did I earn a reward?”

“Anything you want,” he agreed graciously. “It’s Christmas. I’m feeling generous.”

April scoffed. “Don’t give me that,” she protested. “I earned it fair and square. Look what you did to my back.”

“Mmm,” he agreed languorously, a lion at peace in its den after a feast. “Need to have an artist paint you one of these days.”

“God, you’re too conceited for words,” she laughed. “If we let you, you’d paper the whole house in photos of our bruises.”

“Oh, now that’s a wonderful idea,” he said, rolling up from his sprawl.

April laughed softly. She was settling into a soft glide that would ultimately send her to sleep.

“Knot me, Cas. Please? Doesn’t need to be violent or anything. I need to feel you all around me and inside me and through me.”

“On your side, love,” he instructed. “Face me. There’s my girl. Lift your leg up to my waist. Close your eyes and float for me.” He helped to arrange her so that he had reach without jostling her overmuch. He reached down between them and stroked himself to stiffness before shunting his hips in tight and burying himself inside her. She hummed in contentment, and he rocked slowly into her body, cradling her to sleep with kisses to her temple and a gentle rush of blood to her lower regions.

Cas slipped off the bed without waking his mate. He fetched a heavy blanket and tucked her in before slipping into a pair of warm sweatpants and padding back up to the main floor for a filling lunch. Alex waddled across to meet him in the archway to the kitchen. Cas lifted the pup to his hip with a grin.

“He’s been beside himself wondering where you went,” Michael explained. “We saved you some quiche. Are you hungry?”

“Famished,” Cas answered. “And thirsty.”

“I’ll bet,” the Omega observed, filling a water glass for his Alpha at the sink. “How’s Pete?”

“Injured,” Cas admitted ruefully. “But she seems content. She’s sleeping. She’ll need a hearty meal and a lot of water when she wakes. Some Tylenol, too.”

“How injured?” Michael asked as he delivered Cas his drinking glass and returned to the kitchen to fill him a plate. “Her parents are on their way, sir. Is she out for the rest of the day?”

“We’ll have to play that by ear when she wakes,” Cas told him. “The usual intensity wasn’t cutting it for either of us. It took the bullwhip to finally get some traction. Her back is a bit of a mess.”

Michael pulled Castiel’s plate out of the microwave and mulled over the news. “You should stay with her,” he said as he placed the plate in front of his Alpha. “She shouldn’t be alone, and you two can’t always substitute me in your place for aftercare. She needs you.”

“Yes, Michael. I know. I don’t intend to abandon her. I need to eat and shower, and then I’m going right back. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like. She’ll likely sleep for two or three hours. With any luck, she’ll wake refreshed and eager to enjoy the evening with her parents and their grandchildren. I also have a bit of business to do tonight that will require a drive over to Bobby’s. I’m taking Dean with me. We won’t be long. Would you please ensure that the Andersons don’t feel they’ve arrived at an inconvenient time? I need you to host for me.”

“Can’t your business wait, Alpha? It’s Christmas.”

Cas patiently dodged Alex’s reach for his fork as he took a bite of quiche. Then he swallowed, wiped his mouth with a napkin as he fed his son a small bite and shook his head. “It can’t wait. It won’t take long though. I need to speak to him in person. How’s Dean? Did he eat?”

Michael nodded and removed the pup from Castiel’s lap so the man could eat in peace. “He seems fine. He’s in the backyard with the triplets waging a Nerf war with Sarah and Gabe. All that pain just vanished like it had never happened at all. I can’t sense a trace of it. He’s got it locked down tight, and he won’t say another word to me about it. Cas, are you sure it wasn’t having Naomi here that triggered him?”

“No, but Dean is, and that has to mean something. We have to trust his lead on this one, Michael. His Submissive has always had telltale signals that call out to me when he needs to be taken in hand, and I’m not sensing that just yet. If you’re sensing differently, I need you to tell me. My gut is to follow Dean’s instinct and be ready to step up the moment he shifts Tertiary again.”

Michael grimaced and glanced toward the back window although the kitchen offered him no view of the battle royale out on the back lawn. An occasional shriek or shout muffled through the window. “I got nothin’, sir,” he lamented. “Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever is looming on the horizon isn’t going to give us any warning unless we can brainstorm some way to set his brat up to pop off safely. Maybe we lay a baseball bat and a plate glass window in his path and hope he takes the bait.”

Cas sighed, finishing the last of his meal. “That would only work if his wolf believed the glass was a family heirloom of mine. It isn’t mindless destruction he’s targeting, Michael, it’s willful destruction that hurts _me_ specifically. And I guess a trick like that would only work once before his Tertiary caught on.”

Michael shifted down to hunker low and confidential over the corner of the table. “Cas, is this a self-fulfilling prophecy you two started? This need to keep upping the ante every round, to make the destruction worse and worse over the years, is there any way to set it back to the start? What would he be like if he hadn’t met you and learned that there aren’t any limits to what you’ll let him do? Would he be able to regulate himself back down to a reasonable level of tantrum? Maybe it only got out of control because it _can._”

“Perfectly good theory, Omega,” Cas replied. “With no means to test it. We can’t spend time wondering what might have been. We have no choice but to deal with what is.” He carried his plate and glass to the kitchen.

“Cas, he’s going to blindside you. You get that. Right? He’s going to poke and prod and probe at you until he finds a touchy spot and then he’s going to dig right into it until you’re hurt for real. No roleplay is ever going to work.”

Cas nodded, resting his hands on the countertop by the sink and staring out the back window. “I know.”

“How can you manage a marriage with that going on between you? Someday you’re going to wake up to find some total stranger fucking him in your bed. He has no limits to what he might do to provoke you.”

Cas steeled his jaw and turned to face Michael. “Yes, he does,” he said firmly. “He has limits. There are lines he won’t cross. He’s not going to harm the children. He’s not going to harm you or April…”

“All due respect, sir,” Michael broke in. “That incident with the kitchen table? He deliberately stoked you by aiming darts at Pete. He knew you’d be more upset that he stole her knee-pillow than that he launched your family’s breakfast table.”

Cas nodded. “He pulled April into that. I won’t pretend that wasn’t a part of his thinking, but there’s a big difference between being offensive and actually harming either of you. Michael, the key to all of this is in how I react to his outbursts. I’ve been aware of that for years. If I coddle him and forgive too easily, he increases the intensity. If I completely overreact, he can sense that it’s a roleplay. There is a razor-thin line I must walk to see us both through to a satisfying culmination, but I’ve had ample practice, and I am adept at striking the tone he seeks. He’s asking us to assist him in finding means to feel that tone without tearing down what we’ve built, and I mean to help him do that. But we cannot do it in the open. We must pick our way through delicately, in stealth.”

Michael nodded sadly. “So we’re back to leaving a baseball bat in his path.”

Cas took a deep breath and blew it out, turning again to watch out the back window. He could see Dean, Portia bounding after him, pelting Gabe with a rapid-fire assault of Nerf-shot from his new automatic machine gun. “That’s the best idea we have,” Cas admitted. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Go shower, sir. Ace and I will look in on Pete. Little fellow might actually nap now that things have calmed down.”

Cas stretched his hands out for the boy. “Give him to me. I don’t want the pups in the playroom, even for a nap. He can help me shower, and then I’ll settle him in his own bed.”

Michael handed Alex off and followed Cas into the parlor. “Clear that up for me, sir. Where do we draw the line about what we show the pups? I don’t have any history to guide me. My folks were very private. Most of my training is geared toward assuming I already have instincts for this. But I don’t.”

Cas paused at the bottom of the stairs. “You’re familiar with the Z-scale,” he began, thinking as he went with a concentrated frown. Michael nodded. Cas continued. “What children are wired to digest from adult behavior are actions that are non-violent and generally toward the center of the scale. They inherently understand hierarchical sex, although D.F.’s are too violent for their immature psyches. They understand love, affection, pleasure, and status. Simple coupling and other straightforward behaviors – fellatio, cunnilingus, frotting and the like – cause them no dismay whatsoever. It is wise, however, to shield them from complex kinks. They have no means to comprehend masochism, violence, humiliation, bondage, or any of the more strident kinks that adults derive pleasure from. If you need a rule of thumb, Michael, just ask yourself if the action itself can clearly be comprehended as pleasurable by even rudimentary measures and by most people. Actions that are explicit and that many people would find uncomfortable to participate in are unsuitable for our pups to witness.”

“Sir, you spank your mate at breakfast if she displeases you sexually. How is that suitable?”

Cas pondered. “It’s hierarchical, Michael, and a spanking isn’t expressly explicit.”

“Papa!” Alex announced, pulling warm crow’s feet from Cas and a soft smile from Michael.

“Let’s discuss this further at our next Dom-training session,” Cas decided. “I expect Sarah has many of the same questions.”

“Yes, sir,” Michael answered easily. “Ace, you be good for Papa.”

“Papa!” the pup shouted proudly.

Michael chuckled.

Cas took another moment to focus Alex’s attention back to Michael. “And who is this, Alex?” he asked, pointing at Michael.

“A-Pa!” Alex said.

“That’s very close,” Cas praised. Michael grinned and leaned in to plant a kiss on Alex’s cheek. “Can you say, ‘Oh-Pa’?” Cas made a round circle with his mouth, leading the pup to mimic him.

“Ohhhh!” Alex copied.

“Good,” said Cas. “Oh-Pahp, say it like Papa does. Oh. Pahhhp.”

Alex studied Castiel’s mouth, his brow a perfect facsimile of Dean’s when he concentrated. “Ohhh-Pa!” he said.

“That’s my boy!” Cas cheered. “My goodness, you’re trying so hard for me.” Cas had vowed to focus his praise to his pups in terms of their efforts rather than their achievements or their inborn attributes. That route did nothing to alleviate his awkward speech patterns, but it let him foster a home where effort and intent were more highly regarded than traits that a child could do nothing about. “Give O-Pop a kiss and come take a shower with Papa. I need you to help me get clean. Papa stinks.”

Alex leaned outward, braced in Cas’ arms and landed a wet kiss on Michael’s lips. He laughed at Cas’ funny crinkled nose, clearly in agreement that the man needed a shower, and he waved an energetic farewell to Michael as a laughing Papa carried him up the stairs.

“Oh-Pah!” Alex called over Castiel’s shoulder.

“You’ve been promoted,” Gabe observed. Michael jumped. “Opa means grandfather,” Gabe told him.

“Well, it’s close enough for me,” Michael grinned. “Where are my pups?”

“Dean and Kali are bringing up the rear, the slowpokes. They’re all getting cranky. Probably overstimulated. We’re going to see if we can bring the volume down with a little less stimulation.”

“Give them some soft-cover books and let them play on the floor in the living room,” Michael advised. “Sing to them if they are struggling to calm down.”

“What, you’re not joining?” Gabe asked as Dean stumbled in through the back and handed Emma off. Gabe took her and hoisted her up to his shoulder.

“I need to check on Pete,” Michael said. “Alpha did a number on her back, apparently, and she’s going to need a few hours and a few icepacks.”

“It’s Christmas, for fuck’s sake,” Gabe cried. “The fucker can’t take one day off?!”

“Gabe, language,” Michael sighed.

Gabe raised his brows and said very clearly. “Their mother is downstairs fucking bleeding into the sheets and you’re worried about my language?”

“Look at me, Gabriel,” Michael instructed assertively, assuming a powerful posture. “Cool it with the swearing around my pups, or lose the right to spend time with them. Understood?” Michael’s eyes flashed. The air vibrated subtly.

Gabe took a surprised step backward. “Wow,” he breathed, blinking. “Yeah, man, whatever you say. Damn, that’s a weighty mofo you’re carting around in there. I always wondered.”

Dean chuckled and passed between the two Omegas on his way toward the hall. “Come on, Gabe. Now’s not the time to poke at the beast unless you wanna sing falsetto.”

Gabriel followed Dean at a trot, looking back over his shoulder. “Was that his wolf, alpha? It was, wasn’t it? Hoo boy, that felt like a earthquake under my feet. Did you feel it?”

“I’ve felt it, Gabriel,” Dean huffed impatiently. Kali followed at a slower pace with Jimmy in her arms. She shook her head at Gabe in amusement and winked at Michael.

Michael checked on April, found her sleeping deeply, and then jogged back up to the kitchen to fetch her a tray of finger foods and a pitcher of water. By the time Cas returned, freshly showered and sans pup, Portia at his heels, Michael was snuggled in the middle of the bed with April lying prone against his belly. He had one hand in motion in her hair and a paperback novel in the other. The tray sat half eaten, the pitcher partially consumed, and both Omegas were giving off scents of contentment.

Cas slipped under the blanket beside them and curled in. Portia jumped up to join them, flopping down at the foot with a tired huff.

“Get some rest, sir,” Michael whispered. “She smells balanced to me. You did good work. She’s back to herself. Thanks for that. I was worried about her.”

Castiel nodded serenely. He snuggled right up to them both, touching them along as much of their length as he could, and he began snoring softly before his hands even stopped twitching. Michael chuckled smugly and went back to his book, a stocking stuffer that he suspected came from Sam. He would never know for sure. Christmas stocking contents were anonymous in this Pack.

***************

Dean pulled the Impala to a stop in the bare dirt of Bobby’s auto salvage yard. The old alpha still lived in the home his father left him, still ran it as a side business, although he’d long since passed all management of the place off to his crusty neighbor, Frank. Frank ostensibly lived next door, but the fence had long since been knocked down, and the two men paid no mind to property lines whatsoever. Their relationship bore all the hallmarks of a “Grumpy Old Men” fraternal bond. They sniped and bickered like an old married couple. There was no _couple_ to them whatsoever though. Even through Bobby’s waning Ruts, theirs was a platonic connection, not an intimate one.

And it proved that Lupins have it in them to connect person to person outside of the mandates of their wolves just as fervently as Primates do.

Bobby met them on his dilapidated porch, holding the screen door wide and reminding the Winchesters to wipe their damn feet as they eased past him into the warmth of his cozy home.

“Merry Christmas to you too, you old grouch,” Dean remarked playfully. He handed Bobby a wrapped gift and then sauntered into the kitchen in search of a refreshment.

“What’s this,” Bobby asked, holding the present like it might explode.

“Relax, alpha,” Dean called. “It’s from April. It won’t bite you.”

Bobby eased the paper off and opened the box. He pulled out a picture frame covered around the edges in tiny colorful handprints, many of them smudged, that framed a photo of Alex resting peacefully against Bobby’s chest.

“She made this for me?” Bobby asked carefully. He glanced up at Cas who shifted around to get a better look himself.

“Looks more like Alex made it,” Dean commented uncharitably. “Guess they had to try to draw attention away from the photo somehow. I suspect you broke the camera, so that’s probably the only pic she had.”

Cas laughed. Bobby slapped at Dean’s head, but the brat ducked out of the way and tossed a beer bottle into his husband’s lap. Cas caught it with a grimace. Opening it now would be a disaster. Dean winked.

“Tell April and Alex that it’s wonderful, and I’m going to give it pride of place on my desk at the Facility,” Bobby gushed, running light thumbs over the frame. “And you, Dean, you can go fuck yourself.”

“I would if I could reach, Bobby,” Dean teased back. “You know that.”

Dean handed a beer to Bobby in amends and sank down on the ancient couch beside Cas. He took Castiel’s bottle, tapped the neck carefully a few times and then cracked the lid with the edge of his ring. He waited a moment to make sure it wasn’t going to foam over, then he handed it smugly back with a smirk.

Cas accepted the bottle, secured an arm around Dean’s shoulder, and sank back into comfort. They chatted amiably for an hour or so, reminiscing and teasing playfully, enjoying the solace of old friendships that had tempered through the years into family.

Eventually, Cas steered the conversation back to business, asking Bobby about the suspected trafficking hub they’d discovered outside of St. Louis. Dean stayed through the essentials, but once they knuckled down to details and potential plans, he excused himself.

He steered to the first floor bathroom, but after relieving himself of his last two beers and washing up, he grabbed his coat off the hook by the door and slipped out into the gray cold of late afternoon.

Dean’s shoulders sagged with the release of his carefully constructed mask once the door clicked closed behind him. He felt his face go slack as his breath puffed clouds in front of him. He paused a few moments, leaning on the battered wooden rail, and then he skipped lightly down the steps into muddy gravel. He had some salvaging to do, he told himself. Parts for a ’67 Impala and a classic Chevelle, those weren’t easy to come by anymore. Every now and then, Frank took custody of an old Chevy with some useful bits that Dean could glean, restore, and make use of.

Dean kicked an odd rock here and there as he strolled, sending it skittering off into the rusty heaps before him. He tucked his hands into his pockets for the warmth, balling them into fists. That his fists clenched up tighter than the weather demanded wasn’t lost on Dean, but he didn’t dwell on it.

It wasn’t a huge lot, so it didn’t take Dean long to find the ’68 Caprice that Frank told him would be his for first rifling. Dean walked a slow circuit around her, noting the wear, the rust, the sagging over her rear axle. He took a knee and checked what he could see beneath her rear end. It wasn’t promising. Her chassis was probably rusted through. Her engine couldn’t possibly have fared better, but maybe there were some interior parts worth salvaging. He was losing light fast.

Dean lifted the hood, checking key components with a practiced eye. Behind him, the sun set, losing him the last of the light he needed. He let the hood drop with a clang, and he stood hunkered over the old car, folded nearly in half with his elbows braced and his legs quivering. He felt utterly alone. He was cold. He was aware suddenly of being surrounded by unknowns, and he closed his eyes. His mouth fell open, and his breath came quicker.

Dean stood like that until the last of the sunlight faded. Calmly, too calmly, he pushed himself to standing and shoved off the derelict scrap of junk, pacing intentionally toward the spotlight at the front of the yard, right in front of the house where his pride and joy sat gleaming, clean and shining, loved and cared for, centered perfectly in a pool of yellow light beneath one bright bulb on a high pole.

Without pausing, Dean smoothly closed his hand around the handle of a sledgehammer that stood propped against the dismantled fender of an old Ford pickup, weighted side down, and he swung it effortlessly to his shoulder, describing a perfect circle as he walked. His eyes stared at nothing. His pace never faltered.

He traced his fingertips along the elegant curve of his Baby’s hood, along her front fender, her driver’s side window, down along the cold steel of the passenger door, out along the gleaming metal trunk. How many touches had he shared with this paragon of perfect form? How many times had he washed it? Caressed it? Ogled it?

How many times had his fingers flexed into the door handle and swung into her, an entrance as entrancing as thrusting into his mate in the dark?

Eyes still unfocused, Dean gripped the handle of the sledge, and he screwed his face tight in effort, swinging down with all of his might, landing a hard, brutal blow into the center of the trunk with a riotous clank. It was loud enough to jar him nearly back to himself, but the sight of the dent, scraping harshly into the dark paint, set his jaw, and he hauled back and swung again, feeling his heart break as he landed the blow.

Could he hear his Baby cry out? No. Don’t be stupid, Winchester. It’s a car.

It’s only a car.

He slammed home again, feeling the impact jolt down his arm into his back, into his hips, and he ached. He realized after the fourth blow that he ached everywhere. He was shaking badly, crying openly, and he swung again, releasing a bloodcurdling wail of torment. The trunk sagged and split beneath the strength of an alpha, no match for the sheer force of Dean’s despair.

He swung again, screaming as he landed blow after horrible blow, ultimately shouting a torrent of profanity into the still winter night, sweating beneath his coat, sweating enough that his grip slipped more than once.

And then Castiel was there. Cas caught the hammer on its upward swing and wrenched it out of Dean’s hands. He tossed it aside and wrapped his arms around his husband, binding Dean’s arms to his sides.

“Stop, Dean! Stop it! It’s time to stop. Let it go. Come on, baby. Let it go.”

Dean leaned backward, face to the sky, struggling impotently, and roared at the stars.

Cas held him through it, his face pressed hard against Dean’s neck, his arms offering no slack. Dean screamed himself hoarse, struggling in Castiel’s grip.

At length, he slowed, huffed heavy, cloudy gasps, and buckled, dropping his forehead onto the ruined steel of his beloved car. Tears streaming, he rolled his head back and forth. Cas held him through it.

In the awful silence that followed, Dean sagged against Cas’ grip, grimacing, unable to garner the strength to raise his head and see for himself what he’d just done. Dean’s head had come to a horrible screeching halt. He could feel Castiel at his back, feel the warmth of his husband’s tears on the back of his neck, feel Castiel’s resolve not to show weakness in the face of Dean’s need despite the unbearable sadness that eclipsed nearly every other emotion in Castiel’s heart.

For Dean had broken the pattern. This destruction was nowhere near the worst he was capable of, nowhere near the worst he’d ever done. But in his desperation to avoid hurting his family, he’d turned the power of his outlandish need for devastation on himself, something he’d never done before, and it broke Castiel’s heart.

The resolution from here all depended upon Castiel holding firm and allowing no softness to show through. Dean knew it was there, that sympathy, that ache, but if Cas couldn’t stay the course and pull the pattern back into an alignment they both knew, all the anguish would be for nothing. Dean squeezed his eyes closed and chanted meaningless detritus into his own head, hoping to drown out his conscious mind. If he could only stop thinking for one fucking second and let go, his Dominant could drag him bodily through the fire he so desperately needed.

God, please let Castiel be up to this.

Dean felt Castiel harden, felt the sympathy disappear and a cold judgment take its place. Castiel released Dean to slump over the trunk with the damage right in front of his face and turned his back on his Sub, standing upright and drying his eyes in a surreptitious swipe with one hand. He blew out a quiet breath. He gathered himself.

He steeled his jaw and hardened his eyes, and then he turned back.

“Get up,” said Castiel, a cold snap of an order.

Dean clenched his teeth and fisted the bumper, slicing his fingers on the sharp chrome. He grimaced, but he shifted onto his knees in the mud, and he defied his Alpha.

“On your feet, Submissive. _NOW!_”

“Fuck you,” Dean spat over his shoulder. “You can’t punish me for damaging my own car.”

Cas stepped right up behind him, wrenched his head back with a fearsome grip to his hair and glowered down at him.

“What did you just say to me?”

“Fuck. You.” Dean enunciated clearly. His cheeks flushed with a hot, burning, rosy glow, and his eyes flashed red.

Anger flashed hot and powerful and real behind Castiel’s crimson eyes and he let go of Dean’s hair. He stepped back a pace and crossed his arms. “I’ve never reached five, my Pet,” he rumbled in his deepest voice. “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to finish a count and have you still standing defiant before me. Shall we find out?”

“It’s _my_ car!” Dean declared. His eyes filled with hot angry tears, and he clung to the bumper as if he’d drown without it.

“One,” Cas said calmly.

_”FUCK YOU!!”_

“Two.”

“You can’t fix this with a fucking leather strap! I’m too fucking broken! Don’t you get that?!”

“Three.”

“Goddamnit, Cas! Can’t you hear me? Just fucking leave me already! I’m not worth it!”

“Four.”

“Are you really _that_ stupid and codependent? You don’t need me, damnit! You don’t need this wreck dragging you backward for the rest of your fucking life!! What the fuck is the matter with you?”

“Five.”

There was a brief pause as the world held its breath. The word pulsated in the air, jangling reverently for a moment as they both listened to it echo, and then Dean’s eyes widened as Castiel lunged for him and hauled him to his feet with a grip in the lapels of his winter coat. He flung Dean onto the frozen steel of his ravaged trunk and held him there, shaking in his rage.

“You don’t decide that for me, Dean! You don’t get to tell me what I need or who to fucking love! And you _don’t_ get to defy me! Not now. Not after everything. Not after _this!”_ Castiel pulled hard at his claim from within his head, and Dean flinched as it clamped into him like a vice.

Dean grunted loud as he used Castiel’s grip on him to leverage his knees up, pressed his boots into Castiel’s gut and kicked out with all his might, sending the Alpha sprawling. Dean followed him, yanking him up to his feet and planting a fist into his jaw.

Castiel roared, catching Dean’s coat, shifting his weight, and driving him right back onto the Impala’s trunk on his belly with a ‘Whoof!’ that drove the breath from Dean’s lungs. Dean gurgled in vain, trying and failing to draw a breath. Castiel wrenched his arms back behind him and pressed his cheek into the cold metal beneath him.

“No, Dean,” he breathed, panting hard, out of breath himself. “Not like this. I’ll dance with you however you need me to, but I won’t fight you.” Castiel pressed him harder into the surface and then let go, pacing a wide path away before coming slowly back, thinking fast. Dean had rolled painfully over and sunk down, still gasping, to sit right on his butt in the mud. He looked devastated and alone. He looked shattered.

Castiel hardened his expression once more as he approached. He raised his chin and his brow, and he fixed Dean with a furious glare. “On your feet.”

This time, Dean offered no resistance. It took him a few moments to brace his back against the bumper and find strength in his legs. His hands bled streaks onto his jeans as he heaved himself upward. Once upright, Castiel took him by the bicep and turned him harshly.

He pointed at the trunk, his arm a condemnation that shook with fury. “Look at it, Dean. Look what you did.”

Dean swayed on his feet, but he wasn’t going to fall, not while the Alpha had a hand on him.

“You don’t get to destroy everything you love and think it makes no difference!” Castiel spat. “You think I don’t know what this means? You think it’s just a _thing_, and it doesn’t matter?”

Tears fell new and steaming from Dean’s eyes as the scope of the damage he’d meted out upon his beloved Impala struck him with terrible clarity. “You think,” Castiel went on, “that I don’t know that every blow to this car is tantamount to a slice right into your own _flesh?!”_

“Cas, please,” Dean whimpered.

“You don’t own this car, Dean Michael! _I DO!_ You gave me everything! You gave me everything you are and everything you have, and you _SWORE_ to me you’d take care of everything I returned to your custody! Does _this_ look well cared for to you, Dean? DOES IT?”

“Sir, please?” Dean’s voice shook with fervor.

“Please what?” Castiel asked coldly.

“I didn’t mean it,” Dean begged pathetically.

“Yes, you did,” Castiel replied. “You meant every single swing. You meant to drive right into your own skin until you could peel the demons out with your bare hands.” Alpha offered him no mercy. “But that’s. Not. Your. Job. Do you hear me? Damnit, Dean, you broke your first rule, and you did it flagrantly! You flipped me the bird, and you threw yourself into the junkheap!”

“I HAD to!” Dean wailed. “Don’t you get it?”

Castiel cut him off furiously. “I _told_ you that we would think of something together, Dean, and you said you trusted me, and then this! What the fuck is this? Does this look like trust to you?”

Dean sniffled and lowered himself to his knees, Castiel still bracing his arm.

The Alpha tightened his grip. “Have you gone deaf in addition to daft?” he asked in outrage. “Stand! UP!”

Dean’s face crumpled, and he sniffled again with a swipe from the back of his free arm to his nose, but he struggled back up to his feet. Castiel’s face was only centimeters away, and Dean shied back.

“Open your trunk,” the Alpha instructed unexpectedly.

“Huh?” Dean eloquently wondered, taken completely by surprise. His trunk?

“The keys are in your pocket, Pet. Remove them. Insert the appropriate key into the appropriate orifice, and open the trunk.” Castiel’s hard voice brooked no argument or delay. He’d also shifted into a humiliating tone, one that tore chunks the size of his fist off Dean’s self-confidence. Dean descended rapidly into a headspace that was miserably uncomfortable.

He didn’t like it here.

And the man with the red eyes was scary as fuck.

Dean’s trembling fingers slipped into the right pocket of his blue jeans and came out with a small ring of keys. He separated out the round-headed one and managed to wrench the ruined trunk open, revealing an odd array of detritus and containers.

“Very good,” Castiel praised coldly. “Now. Open the black box in the back left corner and show it to me.”

Dean froze, licking his lips, his hands still on the trunk ledge above his head. Stupidly, he opted to play dumb initially. He placed a shaky hand on an innocuous brown cardboard cigar box, taped along its edges to hold it together after many years of jostling. His fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

“The black one behind that, Dean Michael. Do not try my patience.”

“Cas…” Dean breathed desperately. “Please.”

Castiel tore Dean from his spot, rotated him bodily around the end of the car, and flattened him against his driver side back seat door. Dean winced. He didn’t struggle.

“My name,” Castiel spat. “Is forfeit to you right now. You may call me ‘Sir’. You may call me ‘Alpha’. You may call me ‘God Help Me’, if you like. You may NOT call me ‘Cas’. Do I make myself clear?”

Dean nodded mutely. Desperately.

“Good. Now. There is a closed box in your trunk. It is painted matte black so that it blends into the interior. It is approximately two feet long. It sits at the very back, nestled carefully so as to be unobtrusive to the casual glance. Go fetch me that box, Dean Michael. Right now.”

Castiel saw Dean’s eyes shift with his descent. His scent shifted into fear and anticipation. He was almost there, almost at the optimal position to run this gauntlet. Cas released Dean’s lapel and gave him a moderate nudge toward the rear of the car.

Bobby stood observing from the porch with a steaming mug in his hand.

At the trunk, Dean scrabbled the box forward, reluctant to open it, but he had no choice. He set it toward the front and lifted the lid. Castiel peered over his shoulder with a grim expression. Inside, the cat-o-nine-tails that Cas had used on Dean recently during their first attempt to subvert Dean’s fall sat wedged beside Castiel’s favorite stiff leather tawse.

Cas reached out and picked both of the implements up. Dean averted his eyes and stood supremely still, bracing himself on the bumper. As the rubber-tipped leather tails of the expensive torture device swung clear, Cas caught sight of a thin, springy cane underneath. He chuckled. He hadn’t seen the lap cane that he’d used on Dean back on the night they got engaged since that fateful night.

Castiel picked that up too, examining the tools in his hands and pacing a few steps away. Dean turned slowly around. When Castiel spun to face him, he froze with a quick gasp.

“You thought to steal from me?” Castiel said in a brutal voice, putting paid to any hopes that had still lingered that his Top might take a forgiving route. _”From ME?”_

Dean blinked rapidly as the rush of adrenalin hit his nervous system. “Sir, I…I…”

“You STOLE these from me, Dean Michael, and you hid them where I was unlikely to find them. Do you want to explain this to me?”

“Nossir.”

“Indeed,” Castiel agreed acerbically. What was there to say? “Pet, how many times have you fantasized about me discovering your cache? How many times have you imagined my outrage and how I might respond?”

“Sir?”

“You hid these from me. You didn’t destroy them. Surely, you’re aware there was no chance that they would remain hidden forever. You’re not stupid. You knew I wouldn’t simply forget about them. So, I must assume that having them hidden away, right under my nose as it were, was a ticking timebomb that you relished imagining a culmination to. What is it you expect from me, Winchester?”

“Sir, I… I’m sure I don’t know. Th…That’s your decision.” Dean’s body was zinging with powerful sensation, anticipation, hope and fear and anxiety. He blinked and lowered his eyes.

“Eyes on me, Pet.”

“Sir.”

“Your father raised you with survivalist skills, correct?”

“Sir?” Dean’s floating took a strange skidding halt in mid-air, and he frowned.

“You can, at need, build a campfire, can you not?”

Dean’s mouth dropped open. A hard look from his Dom had him stuttering out an affirmation.

“Excellent. Then do so. Right here behind your car. A small one will do nicely. Build me a fire, Pet. I’m cold.”

Dean blinked in confusion, but he stumbled away to gather flammable materials. Once constructed, he flicked his lighter into the soft fabrics he’d stuffed at the base of a motley pile of sad winter twigs, and he soon had a crackling fire – not big, but stable. Briefly, he warmed his hands at the flickering flames.

Castiel tapped him on the shoulder with the lap cane and handed it to Dean.

“Snap it over your knee and feed it into the fire, Pet.”

Dean wilted. His shoulders sagged visibly. “Sir, no. Please. You love this one.”

_”Loved,”_ Castiel corrected harshly. “It is foul to me now. Destroy it.”

“Please, Sir. Please just take it out of my ass. I won’t do it again, I swear.”

“Indeed, you will not.” Cas held Dean’s eye with the fortitude of a granite mountain, and Dean sighed sadly. Grasping the cane in reluctant hands, he put his back into the effort and brought it down over his right knee with a crack, snapping it cleanly. Then he dropped both pieces into the fire without ceremony. Flames licked at the dry rattan, melted the plastic end-cap, and blackened the leather cord around the handle. Dean watched with a blank expression as the device of many a bruise and welt vanished before him.

“Now this,” said the Alpha, handing Dean the tawse. Its stiff leather tails had little bend to them, thick and rigid enough to feel like a paddle made of fire when they struck flesh. Dean didn’t protest this time. He registered no emotion as he took the tawse and blankly dropped it into the flames.

Sparks chittered and flew about his hand as the tawse settled at a sharp angle in the middle of the pile, knocking Dean’s carefully constructed little A-frame off kilter. For some time, the tawse sat undamaged in the center. Ultimately though, blackened edges began to smoke and grow darker. Dean watched in silence, feeling dead inside. The only emotion visible on his face was an occasional tic at his lower jaw. His breath caught every now and then.

Castiel said nothing behind him for a long time.

Dean had expected an explosion of outrage when Cas discovered his hiding place. Cas had guessed correctly that fantasizing about the confrontation in that moment had been a driving anticipation for Dean. But Dean had never imagined _this_. The tawse crackled and warped as it burned. Wordlessly, Dean bent down to the little stack of boards and logs he’d amassed and fed two more onto the fire. The cane was destroyed already, nothing left but a thin glowing line of coal to mark its structure.

Dean closed his eyes when he felt Castiel shift at his back. The sensation of the cat-o-nine-tails touching his outer arm made his fists close. Castiel didn’t bother speaking. He just handed the tool forward, trusting Dean knew what to do.

“No, Sir,” Dean managed with difficulty. “Please. You’ve only used it once. I barely got to experience it at all. Please. At least let’s have one more go. Please!” Dean shunted his coat open and attacked his belt buckle. He had his jeans and his underwear at his knees in no time, and he bent himself over his trunk, leaning in braced on his arms before huffing and doffing his coat in a tangle of arms and fabric. He repositioned himself stubbornly.

“Sir, please. Hit me with it. You know you want to. And I deserve it! Please don’t do this…it’s brand new!”

Castiel stood pat with his arms crossed over his chest, the tails of knotted leather and rubber dangling down his side. He didn’t speak, but his body said for him everything there was to say. He wasn’t going to cave. He wasn’t going to change his mind. He waited in the cold air of Christmas night as his Submissive shivered and begged to be punished.

Dean ultimately gave up. He dropped his forehead onto his hands and rolled it a few times in consternation before finding his resolve and pushing up to his feet again. He looked ridiculous with his pants at his knees, but he staggered slowly back and held his hand out.

Castiel wordlessly placed the flail in his hand by its handle. Firelight danced across the tails, sending ghoulish shadows dancing over the Alpha’s face, distorting him into a demon of Dante’s mindscape. Castiel’s jaw twitched, but his eyes were resolute. There was no warmth there, only cold judgment and hellfire.

Dean dropped the gangly tool onto the fire without looking, and then he turned and faced his car. The open trunk lid was just as battered from the underside, where a painful gash ripped a tear in the blackness to show a cold and forbidding sky. Cas had been right. It was a wound into Dean’s own flesh, a laceration into his soul, and he bled pain and self-loathing in rivulets that wouldn’t coagulate. He was bleeding still, from his hands, from his heart, from his soul.

“You’re not in charge, Dean Michael,” Castiel told him. “Whatever you imagined I would do when I exhumed the stolen items that you tried to bury, your fantasies are not my script. Actions have consequences. Go cut me a switch and then undress and return to this spot.”

“Sir,” Dean mumbled, thankful to have a task he understood. He pulled his pants back up and set off at a jog, stripping his own belt out in case he needed to use it to climb into the branches. Bobby’s lot didn’t have many trees, but he’d wisely allowed one Hickory tree to decorate his meager front lawn. Dean ignored the man watching from his own side porch. He regretted that delving into the Hickory tree put him in sight of Frank’s house where more than the usual beater car sat parked in the darkness and a great deal of light spilled out of Frank’s side windows. The man’s sparse family was obviously visiting for Christmas.

Great.

Dean returned quickly. He sat on the cold edge of his still-opened trunk and removed his boots. Castiel wasn’t watching. Instead, he was gazing serenely into the fire. In Dean’s absence, Cas had enlarged the blaze, feeding it enough wood to get a hearty, snapping fire going. It was warm and cheerful, inviting. Dean didn’t dwell on it. He wasn’t worried about needing warmth, expecting that very soon he would be plenty warm enough.

In his head, Dean felt the swirl of desperate need clashing against the rock solid adamance of his Top. This was the confrontation he needed. _This_ feeling was what he could never get to without first destroying something precious. Dean had a greater perspective on it now. He could see how critical it was for him to feel his body jolt painfully as he struck rock bottom within his own psyche and how desperately he needed to look up from within that crevasse and find someone staring coldly down at him, someone who saw him for what he was and who cared enough not to allow him to smooth over the jagged tears in his soul, someone who would stand right beside him through it all, take him firmly by the back of the neck and shove his nose right down into the catastrophe that was Dean’s own self- hatred.

Make him look at it.

Make him acknowledge it.

And then bind back up all the bandages Dean wore to cover over it all.

Naked and trembling in the cold, Dean held the switch out to his husband.

Castiel took it from him without a word and examined it thoroughly. Nodding in approval, Castiel stepped up into Dean’s space. He was close enough that Dean could feel warmth eking off him. He longed for that warmth, but he hadn’t earned it yet.

He’d struck rock bottom. Now it was time to begin the exhausting arduous climb back out of the pit. And while he was fully capable of flinging himself into the hole by himself, he needed assistance to get out.

“Open,” Castiel instructed simply.

Dean opened his mouth.

Castiel put the switch into his mouth, centered so that it balanced easily across his back teeth.

“Hold,” he said.

Dean closed his mouth, clamping the switch between his teeth. It pulled the sides of his mouth as it stuck out a good distance on both sides.

“I want you down in a plank position, Pet. Up on your toes and elbows. Clasp your hands together. Keep your body flat. Hold position until I release you.”

Dean huffed through his nose. He avoided groaning by the barest of margins. He was in no condition for a stamina challenge, especially out in the cold and wet mud. But he obeyed. Dean lowered himself carefully, nudging gravel out of his way and adjusting until he’d found a mostly soft place for both elbows and all ten toes. The balls of his feet sank slightly into the mud. It was cold as fuck, and Dean shivered. The fire was too far away – off his left shoulder – to feel it. It was a tease of light and welcome.

Dean’s abdominal muscles began to tremble in no time. He really wasn’t fit enough for this. His biceps burned. But he held. He whuffed through his nose, finding that the switch between his teeth was a nasty encumbrance both to his concentration and to his breathing.

Behind him, Bobby shuffled down the steps with a canvas tarp and a couple of folding chairs. Cas fed more logs onto the fire. Bobby laid the tarp on the ground and set the chairs up on top of it, drawing them close enough to the fire to be cozy. Dean grunted in effort and held. Cas disappeared and returned with a heavy load of firewood in his arms. He dropped it all into a haphazard pile near the Impala’s rear tire.

Bobby handed Cas a bottle of Scotch and dug a couple of plastic cups out of the satchel over his shoulder. The two of them settled in to enjoy the cold night and the warm fire and the camaraderie of an old friendship.

A drop of sweat fell from the tip of Dean’s nose.

“Knees down, Pet,” Cas finally called without looking at him. “Push back into a ‘Child’s Pose’ and rest for a moment.”

Dean collapsed with a groan. He rolled his body back over his legs, feeling relief in his belly and his arms. The mud was cold, but he didn’t care anymore. He couldn’t make himself look at the fire. He prayed that Frank didn’t spot the beckoning glare of the fire and decide to bring his family over for a nightcap.

Wouldn’t that just be great?

“Back into position now, Pet,” Cas said as he held his cup out for Bobby to fill.

“Sir!” Dean protested with a stick in his mouth making his word thick.

“It’s not my fault that you neglect your core strength, Pet,” Castiel said glibly. “This exercise would be far easier for you if you took care of your body.”

Dean grumbled words he hoped Castiel couldn’t make out and he struggled forward again into his plank.

Bobby sipped Scotch and watched him.

“He doesn’t look much like an alpha in this cold, does he?” the old man observed.

Castiel chuckled. “His genitals may not appreciate the weather,” he agreed. “But his nipples are showing out nicely.”

Dean grimaced.

Castiel wouldn’t have stood for ribbing like that from anyone else, but Bobby was a special case. Bobby had read the situation and determined that to end the scene as quickly as possible and to get the Sub inside out of the cold faster, a touch of extra humiliation might just do the trick. And he wasn’t wrong.

Dean was miserable in every way there was to be miserable except the one flame he really craved, and that was a physical pain brought not by brutal exertion that his body tone wasn’t prepared for, but from a flaying.

He tongued the switch in his mouth, reminding himself it was there. Cas had given him this as a lifeline. If Dean could hold out a little longer, his Dominant would deliver him the rest of the way.

Pray it was only a little while longer.

The two alphas sat at their leisure, enjoying Dean’s fire, enjoying Bobby’s Scotch. Dean sweated, grunting every now and then, grimacing into his effort. His belly ached. His thighs burned. He dropped a knee once or twice when he couldn’t hold any longer. Then he stiffened his spine and his resolve and he lifted it back up, shaking so hard he was in danger of slipping in the mud.

Finally, Castiel set his cup on the canvas tarp. “That’s enough,” he said softly, and Dean’s knees hit the ground with a relief akin to orgasm. “On your feet. Hand me the switch.”

Dean complied eagerly. He was so cold he couldn’t feel his fingers, but they functioned well enough to hand off the switch. Cas gestured toward the trunk with his head, and Dean jumped to obey. Surveying the scene, Castiel pulled him back to standing, closed the trunk with a bang, and nodded him back into place over his own destroyed trunk.

Dean supported himself on his elbows, bending over and providing his Top with a good target.

Behind him, he heard Bobby swirl the liquor in his cup. He heard Alpha swish the switch through air a couple of times. Dean’s butt clenched. This was going to…

_”AAAAAGGGHHHHNNNN!!!”_ Dean screamed. He huffed hard, searching for oxygen that seemed to have vanished. The cold combined with Castiel’s strength and that damned switch set him on fire. He danced a bit in place, funneling the pain down into his feet, out along his fingertips which splayed wide.

“Hold,” Castiel said.

“SIR!”

A singing zip sounded behind him, and another blazing line of fire shot tears squeezing from his eyes and a soundless scream out his mouth. Dean bent his knees slightly. His fingers went white where they clutched each other in front of his face. Looking down, once he could wrench his eyes open again, the horrible jagged chasm he’d pummeled into the living flesh of his beloved baby tore into his heart, and he wept.

Another hot stripe broke another howl free. Dean cried out in agony, loud and unfettered. He was freezing cold and burning hot, and every exhausted muscle tried to clench in vain. He dropped his head onto his fists and sobbed.

Castiel swung again. Hard. Relentless. Merciless.

Dean felt it all begin to dissolve around him. He clung to the only things that were real. He clung to his own hands, to his fiery pain, and to the freezing mud between his toes. His self-absorption, the loathing and dismal gut-wrenching descent into despair all broke apart like a shattered mirror in his head, leaving him shivering in the cold, sobbing in pain and relief, and clutching onto Castiel in his head, onto Michael only a short distance away, onto the stripes singeing his ass, into the splay of his toes.

And then Castiel swung again, putting his shoulder into it, and Dean went up onto the tips of his toes, breathless in agony. He screamed – not a manly hoarse grunt of surprise, but a shrill shriek that tore at his vocal chords and sent birds protesting off their nightly perches.

Huffing, Dean centered himself again, falling back down to his elbows, to his flat feet. He stood as still as he was capable, tears flowing freely, his gasps for breath turning raspy.

“Come here to me, love,” Cas said softly, and Dean dove into his arms, a weeping mess. Cas embraced him, rocked him, wrapped him up in arms and coat and acceptance. “It’s okay, Dean,” he murmured. “Let it out. You’re okay. I’ve got you. I know, baby. We’re all done. Cry as much as you need to. It’s over.”

Dean clutched his husband and wept pitifully, soiling the shoulder of his expensive winter coat with snot and tears.

“You certainly do keep a man on his toes, Winchester,” Cas told him affectionately, earning a hiccup in protest. “Let’s get you warm and cleaned up. Bobby, would you please mind the fire? We’ll be right back.”

“Don’t mind me,” Bobby complained with his breath clouding on his exhale. “It’s only my house. I’ll just sit out here in the cold and wait for you two to warm up.”

“Yes, thank you,” Cas told him unironically over his shoulder. He stooped and gathered Dean’s clothing from the dry tree stump they’d been left on, and he guided Dean into the welcoming warmth of Bobby’s home.

Dean was snuggly and clingy as Cas dressed him, making it difficult to get his clothes back on.

“Baby, I know, but you need to get dressed. Work with me here, and then you can sit in my lap and I’ll hold you for the rest of the evening. Dean, love, let go for a second. It’s too cold for bare skin.”

“Alpha, please. Need you,” Dean snuffled back, resisting Castiel’s efforts. Luckily, after practicing with squirming pups for over a year now, Castiel was adept, and he managed to wend Dean back into his clothes, albeit with a struggle. Wrapping him back into his coat, Cas held him upright by his lapels and leaned in to kiss him softly on the mouth.

“You’re forgiven,” he whispered reverently. “And we’re done with this round. It’s over, Dean. Let it go. Come sit by the fire with me. Let’s calm down and take it easy from here. Deal?”

“Yeah,” Dean sniffled. Cas wiped Dean’s eyes with his own handkerchief and held it for Dean to blow his nose. Dean accepted the attentive care without a thought. He ducked his head into Castiel’s chest when the Alpha led him back out into the cold, and Cas wrapped his boy up in loving arms and drew him down into one chair to share body heat and snuggles.

“That’s a hum-dinger of a gash you need to repair, alpha,” Bobby sighed, handing Cas a double, knowing the two men would be sharing it. “You’ll probably need a replacement. Setting this one back to unblemished is not feasible, if you ask me. I’ll get Frank scoping for parts.”

“I wanna try to fix it, Bobby,” Dean mumbled, still looking down. “If I can get the edges straightened, I can try to weld the hole closed and then smooth it back to flat. I want to try. I owe it to her.”

Bobby whistled a long sad note. “It’s your car, Dean. I think you’re nuts, but it’s your car.”

Castiel’s arm held Dean warmly and securely, and Dean fell asleep soon after, the play of firelight dancing behind his eyelids. The silence in his head lulled him into a soft doze. The spinning had stopped. The urgent tug behind his navel quieted. His wolf lay exhausted and deeply asleep inside a cave in Dean’s mind, and his body went slack.

“Merry Christmas, Castiel,” Bobby said quietly.

“Merry Christmas, old friend,” Cas smiled back, his hand carding through Dean’s hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sending out warm Pack hugs to all of you. We're tough, and we're going to get through this, all of us, together. To everyone who's weathering alone, please know you're not entirely alone. And don't minimize, as so many of us tend to do. This is unprecedented, and it's hard, and it's scary as hell, and the ramifications to our emotional health is gonna be epic. Hang tight with me. One day at a time. I hope you can feel how tightly you're being hugged right now.


	10. Sunday, January 20, 2019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a surprise mass Heat event that is actually no surprise at all. Why weren't the locals prepared? And where can a regional hospital find enough certified alphas to handle it all? If only we knew someone close by who trains and certifies alpha contractors. In other words: We're surrounded by bureaucratic incompetence.
> 
> And there's a double-take. Is Cas losing his edge? Is Michael ready for the big time? Isn't Dean in chastity?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may turn out to be the least smutty sex-driven chapter in the history of smut. Also, I chose to go with a hospital culture of nurses who care a great deal about their patients but have little _patience_ with newbies who haven't yet proven themselves. It's based upon nothing directly. I've never witnessed nurses being this curt with each other, but it was how my words flowed. There's an old guard thing going on that Michael needs to break through. All my respect and admiration to nurses everywhere. You're absolute badasses, and you deserve roses, chocolates, good wine, and three months off with pay.
> 
> This is for Melodina and Jennifly.

Dean hummed cheerfully to his daughter, tied fast to his back in a sling. Over his shoulder, he fed her a small morsel of chicken after blowing on it and testing its temperature with his tongue. Her pudgy lips sucked the bite right out of his fingers, and he grinned back at her.

“Just the chicken, Idge. Daddy’s gonna need the fingers back. What d’ya think? Good? Does it need more salt? Yeah, you’re right. A touch more.”

Tony sighed down at his skillet of sautéed onions, biting his tongue. He and Dean were never going to agree about salt, but he couldn’t deny that Dean’s sous chef gave the man a leg up in confidence. Emma loved everything Dean cooked. Even now she had hoisted herself higher with a grip to his throat and was endeavoring to launch herself over his shoulder where the food was.

“Ow, sweetheart!” Dean protested futilely. “Daddy’s skin is not for climbing! Leggo, Idgie! Jesus!” He pried her claws from his throat with a laugh bubbling up, and he heaved her bodily over his shoulder to extract her from the sling. She pointed toward the counter where the shredded chicken sat giving off sublime and tempting odors.

“I know, love, but we gotta wait. Tony’s making enchiladas for Papa’s dinner and shredded chicken bites for Idgie-cakes.”

“Dean,” April called from the archway. “Cas sent me. Charlie’s on the phone. Alpha’s office.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay. Can you grab this bottomless pit for me?” Dean handed Emma to her mother and hurriedly washed his hands. “What’s up? Did he say?”

April shook her head. “I’m not sure. Something about the full moon?”

“Shit,” Dean mumbled. “I was afraid of that.” He dried his hands, untied his apron, and hurried out of the kitchen. He approached Castiel’s office tentatively, slowing as he rounded the open doorway. Cas looked up from his phone and gestured him in.

“Hold on a moment, Charlie. Dean’s here. I’m putting you on speaker.” Cas activated the phone and then set it on his desk.

“Hey, Chuck,” Dean called.

“Dean, I’m really sorry to disturb you guys, but I got a callout from Lawrence Memorial. I was just telling Cas. They’ve already run straight through their alphas on-call. They’ve gone Code 6. It’s a full-on blanket request for anyone qualified.”

“Labor and delivery?” Dean asked hopefully, futilely pretending Charlie’s call might be anything but what he knew it was, praying it was about newborns, that Cas would be pulling a late night delivering near-term pups, and it would fall to Dean to keep the coffee hot for his return.

Charlie huffed impatiently. “No, Dean, virgin Omegas in Heat. It’s the Septennial. They just keep coming…pardon the pun. Hospital admin has sequestered the west entrance and isolated the Omegas in their own space. They’ve activated their safety protocols, but they need certified alphas, and they need them now. I know it’s the weekend, and your weekends are sacred. I’m really sorry. I was only able to drum up one or two from the contracting department, but we’re stretched too. Most of our alphas are already scheduled to cover our own clinic. All our therapists are manning the hotline. It’s hitting here as hard as Alpha predicted. But we’re not seeing anywhere near the numbers the hospital is. And Memorial is just the first to call in. I’m sure the others are experiencing the same thing. I don’t think they made any preparations at all, sir.”

Cas stood up. “Charlie, call Benny. Have him meet me there. Get Bobby to check on Kansas City and Topeka. Have…Christ, who’s left…have Meg check on the rural clinics. Send Jo to the ACRI clinic if she’s not working already. She’s in charge. I want Ellen at Lawrence Memorial with me. Call Chelsea and tell her I’m on my way.”

“Um, right. Sir…how many should I say are coming? They need to know for scheduling.”

“I’m going to take Michael with me, Charlie,” Cas replied with a weighted look across at his husband. “He can help with the coordination or monitoring. It’ll be just the two of us. One alpha.”

“I can help, boss,” Dean reminded him.

“Your certification’s lapsed, Dean.”

“No, sir, not until my birthday. I’ve got four days. I’m still good. And you heard the beta. They need alphas. I’m certified, medically fit, all my meds up to date and accounted for. I’m fodder, Alpha.”

“Dean…” Cas said tiredly.

“Come on, Cas. He didn’t expect something like this to happen. You know he’ll waive it. I can’t ask him, but you can.”

“Alphas?” Charlie queried hesitantly through the line. “One knot or two?”

“Just one,” Cas stated emphatically.

“Fine,” Dean accepted. “But I’m coming with. Michael’s not certified yet, and he’ll need a mentor onsite.”

Cas rolled his eyes. “Get cracking, Charlie. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“On it,” she chirped. “Thanks, fellas. Hey, boss, send me contact info on anyone else you know who might be eligible, wouldja? Think this round’s gonna be epic.”

Once the call ended, Cas cleared his throat, eliciting a blush from Dean, who dropped his eyes and backed up into the doorway.

“She said they needed knotheads, sir. She said they need as many as they can scrounge up.” Dean blushed hard, his voice a petulant brat’s. “It’s not personal, Alpha. It’s an emergency. These aren’t just horny teenagers, man, they’re in danger. There’s gonna be dead teenagers by daybreak.”

“Why did Michael put you in chastity, Dean?” Cas asked pointedly.

Dean thumbed along the doorjamb, studying the wood grain and failing spectacularly to meet his Alpha’s eyes. “Because I, um, I tried to thwart his authority.” The words stumbled out unhappily.

“You tried to subvert his authority entirely,” Cas corrected him. “Look at me. You tried to exhaust him into sleeping half the afternoon away so you could sneak in an extra session with me when you knew damned well it was Michael’s turn on your disobedient ass.”

“I said I was sorry,” Dean protested.

“And you were whipped, but you’re still going to see the chastity sentence through to the end, Pet. No excuses, not even for this. One alpha more or less isn’t going to make much difference. And you may still have four days remaining on your certification, but that’s hardly reassuring. You’ve made no move to complete the necessary hours toward renewing it.”

“Come on, C.J. I can do this kind of work in my sleep. I _teach_ Heat therapy, man. I don’t need any retraining.”

“The state regulations notwithstanding,” Cas remarked dryly. He pocketed his phone and passed Dean, heading for Michael’s office next door.

Michael himself was frozen right in the middle of the hallway, clearly having overheard and struck dumb.

Cas didn’t pause. “Grab your shoes, Michael. We leave in five minutes. Dean, if you’re coming, meet us at my car. I need to check on Gabe. I need to make sure April can handle the pups if Gabe’s Heat trips. We should expect a long exhausting night. Grab some snacks.” Cas swept out into the foyer, gathering April up as he rounded the corner toward Gabe’s suite at a quick pace.

“Michael, I’m not asking,” Dean said fervently, still standing forlornly in Castiel’s office door. “I fucked up, and I owe you another two days. I’m good for it. I swear.”

Michael huffed and wrapped a warm hand around the back of Dean’s neck. “What am I going to do with you?” he wondered affectionately.

“I can think of a couple things,” Dean teased. But he backtracked swiftly when Michael’s eye flashed a touch of his wolf from beneath his lashes. “But not for another two days! I’ll be good, Sir. Promise.”

Michael pulled his mate closer and kissed him soundly. “Flip back to alpha for me, man. I’m going to need your expertise. I’ve never seen a full moon Heat-glut before, not in person. I don’t know what to do.”

Dean smiled softly, balancing precariously between his brats and his alpha. The harmonized posture sent tingles down into his toes and warmth into his chest. He kissed Michael back, ever so softly, just a touch of lips. “I’m not going to let you fall, Sir. I’ve got you. You’re ready for this.”

In a matter of minutes, the three of them were shuffling out the garage door, each of them swinging a satchel onto his shoulder and trying to get out of each other’s way as they hurried toward the car. Dean steadfastly avoided looking toward his Impala, still covered by a tarp, still undrivable. Jess steered her Camry into the garage when Cas opened the garage door. She nodded and waved, parking in the only empty spot. Cas backed out without stopping to talk to her. Sam was working the night shift at the clinic, managing a process that only needed dusting off once every seven years. Bringing Jess to the big house for the next few days granted her the support she needed to survive twins without her mate, but now, with half the household out of commission too, Jess would give as much support as she got.

He instructed Michael as he backed out, “Text Jess, would you, Michael? Have her keep an eye on Gabe. Let her know he’ll trip before the night is out. Tell her to let Kali manage everything but to keep an eye on them both. Kali may need a hand.”

“Why am I texting Jess instead of Kali?” Michael asked as his thumbs flew across his screen.

“Because Kali is already anxious, and because I told you to!” Cas told him decisively. Then he calmed himself, pulling out past the gate into the street. “Michael, please also let Kali know she’s got our support, and if she needs anything, to send word.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One more thing…” Cas glanced in his rearview mirror to make sure Michael was listening. “Tell her that if Gabe’s temperature reaches 103, that she’s to enlist Cain’s assistance. That’s an order.”

Michael shrugged and texted away. “I hope Cain’s aware of that order,” he mumbled.

“He is,” Cas responded testily.

“Hey, hey, guys,” Dean broke in. “Let’s not start off already pissy. Can you both bring it down a notch or two? I promise you’ll get plenty of opportunities to blow off steam real soon.”

“He will,” Michael added. “No one gets off pushing paper around, Dean.”

Dean blew out a slow breath. “You never know, man. Might be the thrill of a lifetime. Don’t jizz on the forms. They need to be readable.”

Cas and Michael both laughed in spite of themselves at Dean’s ludicrous remark.

Dean took the opportunity to lower the tension further still. “Chill out, fellas. Everything’s under control. No one left the water running in the bathtub or the fire on on the stove. Everyone is where they belong, and everyone’s just fine. Cas? Gabe’s fine, man. He’s fine.”

Cas took hold of Dean’s hand and kissed his ring and his knuckles. He didn’t let go as he set his hand back down on the seat.

At the entrance to the hospital parking lot, a harried and miserably cold cop pointed Cas toward the east lot, but Cas stopped and summoned her closer.

She wasn’t in the mood for a chat. “Sir! Alpha, I need you to continue on into the lot, stay to the east, and don’t approach the western entrance!” She snapped out orders like a drill sergeant, but Castiel ignored the instruction.

“We’re here to assist medically,” he explained. “I have an Omega therapist with me. Where do I need to drop him?”

“Oh,” said the cop, looking about. She could smell alpha, and that seemed to make her answer harder to fix. “Omega and ape staff can still enter through the west, but no visitors, betas, or alphas. We’ve been instructed to reroute everyone who isn’t Omega to the east lot for precautionary reasons.”

“Thank you, officer. I understand,” Cas told her calmly. “Is it all right if I discharge my Omega through the usual route if I promise that my husband and I won’t get out of the car?”

“Alpha, the scent over there is pretty strong. We’ve had a couple of alphas rush the doors already. It’d be safer if you avoid the area altogether. Your Omega can go through the long way with you, or you can drop him here, and I’ll get him an escort.”

“Let’s just take him through with us, Cas,” Dean suggested from the passenger side. “I wanna stay with him.”

Cas nodded. He rolled his window up and followed the cop’s flashlight toward the far lot. Behind him, barely keeping all four wheels on the pavement, a sedan peeled into the Omega section with a loud blast from its horn, summoning help.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean muttered. “It’s a zoo over there, C.J.”

“No doubt,” Cas replied with a touch of tempered impatience. “We tried last Septennial to warn the hospital officials that it was due, and they did nothing. We advised them this round was looking to be a record-breaker, but apparently we got nowhere. They’re protective of their quarterly budgets. They lied to us this time. They said everything was ready. I shouldn’t have believed them.”

“I always thought it was a myth,” Michael remarked with is face against the window, watching an ambulance dodge the sedan to pull up to the Omega entrance before Cas drove around the corner of the building and a far calmer sight took over. Near the east door, a tent had been erected with portable heaters, a folding table, and tent flaps tied back.

“It’s no myth,” Cas told him. Then he intoned pompously in his low gravelly voice, _“At the first full moon of the year, on the morn of the seventh turn, Luna’s children venture forth into her likeness, rotund and fertile, ripe and fruitful, to ply wide of their bounties and…”_

“C.J. give the mythology a rest,” Dean broke in. “It sounds stupid when you try to recite what you don’t understand.” Cas smirked and stopped his recitation. Dean turned to face his mate. “Look, the ancients recorded the pattern tens of thousands of years ago. Even without calendars, they could count to seven, and they noticed that every seventh year, Heats hit like a flash flood on the first full moon. Any Omega who was anywhere near their first mature Heat, any Omega who was within a couple of weeks of their usual cycle… they all toppled at the same time. The scent overwhelms a Pack when it hits like that, and it pretty much always led to a weeklong fuckfest no-holds-barred orgy that ended up with every Omega in the Pack pregnant, and all the young ones freshly Mated. And then, seven months after the orgy, they all go into labor at the same time, give birth at the same time, and produce a single, massive baby boom that ensures the Pack’s standing for the next generation.”

Michael thought it over, following his alphas out of the car. From here, he couldn’t smell a trace of the alluring scent from the other side of the building. They’d implemented Code 6 well, selecting the downwind side for isolating Omegas. “I cycled on time,” he observed. “Why wasn’t I knocked back a couple of weeks?”

“Lucky break,” Dean mumbled. “It usually speeds folks up to tumble early, man, but it doesn’t slow people down if they’re more than a week or two ahead of the moon. Most Omegas who are already established – meaning Mated and mothers with at least one pup under their belt – those guys don’t get swept into the frenzy unless they’re on the cusp anyway. As close as you were, it could’ve gone either way. Honestly, if it hadn’t also been time for my cycle too, you’d probably have been delayed. You’d have been sweating it just like Gabe.”

“Come on you two,” Cas chided. Dean took Michael’s hand and led him across the lot in the Alpha’s wake.

Michael squeezed his mate’s hand and continued thinking out loud. “So, then, it’s also true that every seven years, a super-Alpha is born to the Pack who’s destined to take over its leadership when he comes of age?”

Cas chuckled and ducked into the tent to check in, leaving Dean to answer. Dean turned toward his mate. “If that was true, Michael, then Cas would be an age divisible by seven right now, and he’s not. If there’s an Alpha somewhere who’s higher ranked than Cas, I think we would know by now. Some parts of the story are myth. We’ll get a big population flood from tonight, but there’s no data that supports any difference in the designations of the pups these Omegas produce.”

“Oh. So, are all Packs on the same seven-year cycle?”

“Yup. Every little hamlet and major city is probably as overwhelmed as we are here tonight. Some of them undoubtedly paid attention to history and were ready. Lawrence Kansas, not so much. Here, he’s calling for you.” Dean held the tent flap open for Michael to duck through. He followed his mate into the warm, if slightly stuffy, tent. Cas pointed Michael toward a seated registrar.

“Name?” prompted the harried-looking beta nurse.

“Um, Michael Winchester.”

“Designation?”

“I’m, uh, Omega. I’m training to be a Secondary therapist. My Alpha thought I could help with coordination, but I’m not certified yet.” At Michael’s shoulder, Cas was answering similar questions, angling toward an assignment.

The nurse looked Michael over. “Have you started accompanying rounds yet?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m paired with Jody Mills?”

“That’s good enough for me. Here’s a lanyard. Fill out the tag. Don’t take it off for anything. Go in through the door right there and follow the gold tape until you reach another desk checkpoint. Tell them you’re meant to support station _“Ostrich,”_ and they’ll get you situated.” She was all business, assertive, no-nonsense, inarguably in charge. “Lawrence Memorial thanks you for your assistance.”

“Ostrich. Right. Um?” Michael hesitated.

“Those doors, there, Omega. Here’s a pen.”

“Ma’am, it’s just that my mate planned to mentor me? We thought I’d be assigned a paper-pushing job, some kind of coordination?” Michael pointed over his shoulder at his mate.

“Coordinators, we’ve got. What we need are Omegas who aren’t in Heat. I’ll take every warm body I can find. And your mate isn’t going anywhere near intake,” she shot back with a firm shake of her head. Dean had his bottom lip in his teeth, but he didn’t protest. “No alphas allowed past the double doors. Omegas and qualified betas only. The alpha entrance into each room is from the other side, and we’ll assign each knot the Omega who best fits. No exceptions. If you need a mentor this late in the game, Omega, you’re no use to us. Now scoot.” Michael’s jaw fell slack.

“Come here, Dean,” she continued without a pause. She clearly knew him, but Michael shouldn’t have been surprised. Everyone in Lawrence knew Dean. Cas took his ID card, a badge that was designed to adhere to his skin so he wouldn’t have to remove it when he doffed his clothing. He stopped long enough to be sure Michael knew what was expected of him. He disappeared through the entry doors, following a red line taped to the floor, disappearing into the warm bright corridor with his trench coat flaring behind him. Dean and Michael mutely watched him go.

Dean hesitated. His Alpha was gone, but his mate was still here. “Look, Michael, I can volunteer to do something else. I can take over out here and give one of the nurses the freedom to get back in there where the need is greatest. I swear I wasn’t trying to run around you.”

“Dean!” the nurse beckoned vigorously. “Alpha, this is no time to chat. It’s a nightmare in there.”

Michael sighed. “You have a job to do, Submissive,” he said. “They need you. Take care of yourself, and don’t forget to hydrate. Come find me when you get a break.”

“Michael…”

“Dean, stop. You’re an alpha, and they need you. Go do your job. If I get overwhelmed, I’ll give Jody a call. I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.” Michael pointed back to the nurse waiting impatiently behind the table with a pen already filling in the portions of Dean’s form that she knew.

“Certification number?” she asked as Dean turned back to face her.

“17246,” he rattled off by heart. “It lapses in four days,” he added with a careful look at Michael.

“Happy birthday,” she said blandly, handing him a sticker to fill out. “Next!”

“Cas is gonna be pissed,” Dean lamented as he quickly filled in the ID badge and walked with Michael to the point where their designated lines diverged.

“Worry about that later,” Michael said with a kiss to his cheek. “For now, I’m the one who put that punishment on you. It’s my right to remove it. I’ll see you in a few hours. Try not to Mate anyone.”

“Very funny,” Dean chuckled.

Michael turned to walk backward toward the corner around which the gold tape disappeared. “And make me proud, alpha,” he goaded. “Show me that storied Winchester stamina isn’t a myth.”

“Myth?” Dean protested. “I’ll have you know…” But Michael was already gone, and the orderly hurrying into the building with a crate of supplies gave Dean a worried look.

“No, man, I was just… It was my mate, he…” Dean gave it up for pointless and trudged along the marked path, following the way Castiel had disappeared, muttering to himself.

At the assembly point, Cas stood near Benny and ten or twelve other alphas, summoned from the city and parts roundabout. They were awaiting a briefing and assignments as a team of nurses worked their way through injecting each alpha with a cocktail of antibiotics and preventatives. Cas’ face deadpanned when Dean appeared with his ID badge in his hand, visibly working out where to stick it.

“You can turn right back around and go wait for me in the car, Dean.”

“I’ll have you know, sir, that I’m here under the explicit instruction of my Dominant mate. Not under his permission, mind you, but his _instruction._ Michael didn’t give me a choice.”

“You knew they wouldn’t allow an alpha in to be his mentor,” Castiel hissed.

“Yeah, well. I didn’t know they would send him straight into the red-zone. I expected him to get a job holding shoes or something, handing out coat checks. And besides, you knew everything I knew and you still let me come. Unless I’m totally missing the mark here, I’m exactly where you wanted me to be. Ouch! Damnit.”

The nurse smiled an apology and pasted a sticker to Dean’s badge showing he’d received his inoculation.

Toward the front of the group, an old, respectable beta physician clapped his hands a few times and drew the crowd’s attention forward. “If I may, alphas. We have a few housekeeping items to go over before we begin assigning you rooms. There are policy changes you all need to be aware of.”

Someone near Dean grumbled, “When are there not policy changes?”

“We haven’t finished talking about this, Dean,” Castiel whispered.

Michael approached the desk carefully. The door was flanked by two burly beta guards, immense intimidating muscled brutes, both of them. In front of them, another folding table had been haphazardly erected, and it was manned by a pair of older nurses, one beta and the other Omega. Michael raised his lanyard hesitantly.

“They told me to follow the gold line and to go to the “Ostrich” something?”

“You’re in the right place, boy,” the Omega told him with confidence. “They need all the help they can get. You know how to monitor a Heat cycle?”

“You mean the hormone readings and the phase spikes? I’ve done it in class, but never live.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” gushed the beta. “They sent us a virgin.” There wasn’t any sting in her words, just a gently patronizing regret. “Honey, after tonight, you’re gonna get your wings if you catch my drift. No one walks away from a night like this a virgin. We’ll get that cherry of yours popped in no time. Just remember, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. In you go, now. Don’t be scared. We haven’t killed one yet.”

The Omega nurse whapped her colleague lightly on the arm. “Hush. You’ll scare him off. Gus, love, take this one to Ostrich. Give him to Missy. Make sure she knows he’s a virgin.”

“Follow me, Omega,” the beast on the left intoned.

“I’m not a …” the man hustled him through the door after his colleague unlocked it, and a wave of Heat scent nearly knocked Michael on his ass. “…virgin.” He gaped slightly at the frenzied bustle, dodging hurrying staff and swiftly wheeled gurneys. The beta leading him wasn’t wearing a ventilator like the other beta staff, but he didn’t seem fazed either.

“Dude, what are you, a eunuch?” Michael joshed.

“There’s no need to be rude,” Gus answered calmly, heading up one flight of stairs. “We prefer the term _‘Castrati’.”_

“Oh. Geez. Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

“Ostrich is for the Ozzies,” Gus interrupted in a baritone. “There’s also Osprey and Osmosis. All for Ozzies.”

“Osmosis?” Michael checked in disbelief.

“There aren’t many words that start with O-S,” Gus explained apologetically as if he’d failed somehow.

“So the Omega-Neutrals?”

“Their sectors start with O-N, yes.” Gus seemed ready to change the subject, so Michael nodded and followed without asking.

“Here’s your station,” the beta indicated an offshoot hallway with his head. “Nurse Fellowes, this Omega is here to help. Jeanna asked me to clarify that he’s a virgin.”

The middle-aged nurse, her hair tightly bound in a stiff bun at the back of her head, looked Michael up and down.

“I’m not a virgin,” he explained.

“Mm,” she commented dryly. “We’ll see. Welcome to Ostrich.” She waved Gus away, and he disappeared without a word. Michael had to step lively to catch up to the nurse who had spun on her heels and strode swiftly in the opposite direction still talking, clearly expecting Michael to keep up. “I’m Missy. Don’t call me ma’am. Don’t call me nurse. Only the doctors and the patients call me nurse. This is a Code 6 situation we have here tonight. If you don’t know that term, you’ll figure it out pretty fast. We expect it to last for the next three or four days. If you can, we’ll take you for the whole ride, cycling in and off shift every twelve hours. When you need a break, tell me. If you pass out, we may leave you where you fall as a lesson. We break virgins in hard and fast around here. You know how to monitor a Heat cycle?”

“Yes, Ma’a…uh, Missy.”

“Good. You’ve got rooms four through six. Sit here. Do you need to pee?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Uh…”

“Restroom’s down the hall on the left. Wash your hands and grab some water on your way back.”

“Right.” Michael’s head was already spinning. There was movement everywhere. He stood near the center of a hub with hallways branching away like a star. The smell was dizzying. Michael hurried back from the bathroom, spotting a vending station with a counter full of large, capped cups with straws sticking out. He took one as battered elevator doors dinged open just opposite.

“Oh, lord, here’s another one,” he heard an Omega nurse mumble beside him before she hurried forward to guide the moaning man on his gurney into the hallway, confer with the orderly who had custody, and see him checked in. Michael found his seat again and slid down into it. Missy was nowhere to be seen. In front of him, three monitors were arrayed, each showing feed from a different room, images from the closed circuit cameras as well as constant tracer lines that he recognized as hormone readings and vital statistics. He took a moment to familiarize himself with the monitors, looking up to make sure he had each room’s door in view.

He found a notebook in front of him and recognized it as the same type of log he had filled out in class. He opened it and perused the entries, comfortable that he’d been taught the current formats correctly. This was fast-paced and a bit frightening, but the more he got his bearings, the more familiar it felt. Michael knew this. He breathed out slowly.

He could do this.

At the moment, all three rooms stood empty, but there were four Omegas still in the hallway awaiting rooms and alphas.

“Psst! Hey, new guy!”

Michael looked to his left.

“Natalie,” she said loudly. “When you’re ready, got yourself figured out, flip the switch under your desk. That opens your rooms. And don’t worry, kid. It’s a piece of cake once you get the rhythm. It’s like sex. It’s all about the ebb and flow. You’ve got this.”

Michael smiled shyly. “Thanks, Natalie. I’m Michael.”

“Yeah. Duh,” she muttered, checking her monitors again. “Shout at me if you get into a bind. Push the summons button if one of your rooms needs intervention. That’s your most important job. The staff inside the room is trained to sit tight, keep things as calm as possible if something goes wrong, and rely on us to summon assistance.”

“Look, Natalie, I’m not certified yet. Are you sure this is okay?”

“You know what those squiggly lines on the screen are for?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“You know how to tell a stable reading from a dangerous one?”

“I think so. Is there an audible alarm if it goes into the red zone?”

“Not only that,” she assured him, “but your screen will light up and flash at you too. A chimp can do this job, kid. Relax. Pay attention. Don’t go to sleep, play on your phone, or leave your post, and you’ll do fine.”

“Right,” Michael told himself bracingly before flipping the toggle beneath his countertop. In front of him, lights popped on in front of his three doors. It didn’t take long for three gurneys to peel off the wall and angle into each, their occupants rolling in agony, all of them naked and touching their own sweaty bodies, all of them _’plying wide of their bounties’._ Michael got quite an eyeful of their bounties, in fact, far more than he really wanted to see. He focused on the screens. Each feed blipped to life with a reading that shot off the chart in both directions before finding itself, automatically calibrating a midline, and beginning to track the occupant’s stability. He watched the monitors as each patient was moved to a low, wide bed and sponged off.

He had girls in rooms four and five, and a dude in room six. All of them looked flushed, exhausted, and desperate. Michael opened his binder and began marking data according to the readings, just as he’d been taught. He watched along as temperatures of all three began to spike within moments of each other. He searched for a way to alert the staff inside the rooms, but he soon realized they had access to the same data.

One by one, all but a Secondary therapist left each room, and an alpha entered through a door on the far side.

“Holy fuck,” Michael murmured, using his controls to zoom in.

“Right? Did we choose the right career path, or what?” Natalie agreed with her own eyes glued to her screens. To Michael’s right, another volunteer was planted firmly into the next station down and given instructions as abrupt as his were. She didn’t look like a virgin to Michael though. She looked like maybe she’d been pulled in from retirement. She wasted no time in flipping her lights on and pulling her binder forward. Rooms seven, eight, and nine activated. Michael felt a charge of electricity as Sector Ostrich came fully to life.

“Oi, virgin!” the retiree to his right called out, getting Michael’s attention. “Toss me that pen. Someone stole this one.”

“My name’s Michael,” he said stoutly as he rolled a ballpoint down the counter to her. Behind him, Natalie snickered.

“You get your name back once you’ve proved yourself,” retiree told him. “If your feelings are hurt, darlin’, you can always run back home to Daddy.”

“Wow,” Michael muttered to himself.

It had been hours since Dean last saw Cas. But as he sluiced off briefly in the staff showers, his husband rounded into the same section. He looked as spent as Dean felt. Cas had been heading toward a spigot on the opposite side from Dean, but he caught his husband’s scent and changed direction without even turning his head, practically falling against Dean’s wet body.

“Can’t give out yet, Alpha,” Dean admonished teasingly. “Long way to go.”

Cas sighed. “I know. Had a rough one just now. Fought me. God, I hate having to force it, Dean.”

Dean activated the shower head and walked Cas under the flow. “I know, babe. We all do. But we can’t let them die. You were as gentle as you could be, I know you were.” He pumped some body wash into his hand from the wall reservoir and began to rub it into Cas’ chest.”

Cas let Dean work for a while, standing limply in the steamy shower. “What did you mean when you said I wanted you here, Dean?” he asked suddenly. “If I’d wanted you here, I would’ve said so. What I said was that you should stay home because an alpha in chastity is no use to the hospital on a night like this.”

Dean soaped up his hair and then carefully washed his face. He nudged Cas back into the spray. When the Alpha emerged, he shook his head out like a dog and pulled Dean out toward the lockers by his hand, snatching two towels from the stack on his way.

“Well?” Cas slouched down onto a bench to dry himself. Dean sat beside him with his towel around his shoulders.

“Cas, I don’t know what happened back there, at home, but there’s no way you didn’t know I would end up on this side of the fence instead of chaperoning Omega trainees. The best I can figure is you wanted to set me up to disobey you so you could cut my wolf off at the knees. If you _didn’t_ want me here, balls deep, then you would have left me at home to watch over Gabe and April and Kali and Jess and all the pups…me, C.J. Me, not Cain. Man, I can’t make heads or tails of it, but you’re not stupid. You don’t do shit like this by accident. You _let_ me come along. Either you’re working a ruse to give my wolf room to brat out so you can slap him down or you’re testing Cain. I dunno. For some reason, it was critical to you that I leave the house for the night. Dude, if it was a setup for my Tertiary, I say go for it. Maybe if you keep hitting him with smaller ploys, he won’t get so out of kilter he has to destroy things we both love. Was that it, Cas?”

Castiel frowned, drawing his towel over his face and then spreading it out on the bench so he could sit on it. “No, I don’t think so. If it was, it wasn’t a conscious play.”

Dean rotated to kneel on the floor in front of his husband. “Don’t dwell on it, Alpha. I’m not hurt. Whatever happened to bring us both here, we’re where we need to be. I’ll owe Michael the same chastity commitment I lost here. I owe him two days. Look, this mess will probably taper off just before my birthday. You want me punished? Defer my chastity to run right through my birthday. _That’s_ a punishment, Cas.”

Cas shook his head. His gaze faded out into vagueness, and he spoke more to himself than to Dean. “I didn’t question anything you said,” he muttered. “You suggested coming along to mentor Michael, and I didn’t even think twice about what Michael might need a mentor for. I didn’t think twice even though I know that alphas and Omegas are segregated during a Heat-glut.”

“Dude, you were distracted trying to place every alpha you know from here to Indiana and make sure every little ‘Doc-in-a-box’ in a three-state radius has the resources they need. You were beating yourself up for taking the hospitals’ word for it that they’d prepared. You hate to be blindsided, C.J. It threw you. And I swear I didn’t mean to slip one over on you. I’ll admit I was okay with playing it by ear when we got here. If things were running smoothly, and I was surplus, I would’ve found some menial button-pusher job to do and made my top half useful. I’m not gonna lie though. I knew that if things here were out of control, there’s no way you would keep that chastity stricture in place, no matter what Michael said. I played that a little on the loose side, man. But you… I guess it was distraction, but that looked for the life of me like one of your schemes. I know you when you’re moving chess pieces, Castiel James. I’m your favorite piece. Did you really not know?”

Cas shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wasn’t acting intentionally, I know that much.”

“Hoo-boy,” Dean breathed. “Maybe you’ve got a secret ring-master like April did, ordering your army guys without you knowing about it.”

“Perish the thought,” Cas said with a touch of dread. He leaned forward and rested his head on Dean’s shoulder. “I need to be sure. If my Secondary or Tertiary is learning new tricks, I need to figure them out and put a stop to it. I’m tired though, Dean.”

Dean scratched at the back of Cas’ head, down near the nape of his neck. His Alpha needed a haircut again. The hair behind his ears curled adorably. “Hang tight, love. I’ve got you. You always catch me when I’m too tired to stand. Trust me this time to catch you, all right? I’ve got you.”

Cas sat upright, studied Dean’s face, and then leaned back in and kissed him. “I always feel better when you’re with me,” he said simply. “You make everything better just by being here.”

“Good thing I’m here then, isn’t it?”

Cas said nothing for several moments. He gazed unseeing at Dean’s face.

“Gabe’s fine, Alpha,” Dean told him. Cas nodded dumbly, but his eyes didn’t clear. Dean continued, pressing close. “I called home before my last round. He’s locked into the H/R room with Kali, and they’re in the fun stage right now. He’s not here, babe. He’s not in danger. That was a long, long time ago, and you saved him. Don’t relive it, Cas.”

Castiel’s grip on Dean’s shoulders tightened. Pain passed across his eyes.

Dean watched him carefully. “The round you just had… C.J., was it a young man like Gabe was? It was, wasn’t it? Come on, Alpha, you know this dance. We’ve been through this before, haven’t we? PTSD is a bitch, but you know how to counter this shit. Talk to me, Alpha.”

“He looked just like my brother, Dean. And he wanted nothing to do with me. He fought until they tied him hand and foot. They had to gag him. I couldn’t talk him down.”

“You saved his life, Castiel. His psyche will digest it later. He’ll be fine. You didn’t hurt him. You saved his life. His body and his mind and his spirit, right now they’re all outta wack. He’s fighting circumstance, Alpha. It wasn’t personal. It was pure shitty chance that he looks like Gabe. He’s not Gabe. Right now, Gabe is having a blast getting his ass beat and getting off with a beta fist around his scrotum. Gabe’s fine.”

“Gabe’s fine,” Cas repeated, beginning a chant, mostly to himself. “He’s fine. April’s fine. She’s not close enough to trip this round. She’s at home with the pups.” Castiel’s voice strengthened as he spoke. Dean hummed affirmations along with him. “The pups are all fine. They’re growing every day. The Pack is fine. Everyone’s healthy and balanced. Dean, you’re…are you fine? You’re okay, right?”

“Right as rain, Alpha. Not a cloud in my sky. Me and Michael have all cylinders running smooth as silk. He’s over his snit about missing out on my last fall. Over his resentment about my last bratty episode. We’re fresh from a cycle and washed clean. I owe him two more days of chastity and a cherry pie. And you and me? Cas, look at me. You and me are solid. And don’t you dare correct my grammar. I like the way I talk.”

Cas chuckled. “It’s a style choice, then. I can respect that,” he whispered, kissing Dean again.

“You good?” Dean asked, breaking the kiss. They needed to preserve their strength.

“I am. At least, I’m well enough to continue. When do you check back in?” Cas stood and helped Dean off his knees.

“I have twenty more minutes before they’ll hunt me down. You?”

“About the same,” Cas replied. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“There’s time for a quickie, sir,” Dean suggested.

“Absolutely not, Winchester. We’re here to work, and you’re in chastity.”

Dean snorted. Cas popped his ass, eliciting a very unmanly yipe. Then he wrapped an arm around Dean’s waist and led him naked down the hall toward the breakroom. “Once I figure out the sequence of events that brought you here, Dean, one of us will owe an apology to the other. Don’t get comfortable. I’m not yet certain that it’s me.”

“I told you everything, sir. I really don’t see how you can pin this one on me unless you’re going to claim you had a stroke or something. If you really missed it, man, we have more to worry about that thrashing my backside. Please don’t lose your edge yet. We need you sharp.”

Cas huffed, but he didn’t have an answer. “You’re not helping, Dean.”

“You said I make everything better,” Dean teased back.

“That was before,” Cas argued. “Now you’re being a brat.”

“Who me?” Dean skipped ahead a few steps and turned to bat his eyelashes. “I’m the love of your life.”

“Wipe that simper off your face,” Cas said, trying fruitlessly not to laugh. “It’s absurd. I WILL spank you right here, Pet. Don’t test me.”

Dean rolled his eyes and turned again to walk beside his husband. He pulled in close with an arm around Cas’ neck so he could whisper in the man’s ear. “Just think, C.J. All those _strangers_. All those random wolves I’ve had my knot inside tonight. I’ve shattered my previous record, you know. Shattered it. What are you gonna do about it?”

Cas put his hands on Dean’s shoulders and sat him down in a chair at a long crowded table. Cas towered over him, making him crane his neck to look up. “None of that counts, Pet. Nice try. I take no issue whatsoever with your activities as a Heat-therapist, so that’s irrelevant, strangers or not. And as to your record. You stand at five. Five, Dean. Orgasms in the presence of Heat-scent do not count. They have never counted. Trying to cheat, however, that earns you ten right here. Hands on the wall.”

“It was a joke, sir. I was kidding!”

Cas hauled the man up by his arm and turned him to face the wall. “Two more for arguing.”

Dean glanced around and blushed, realizing suddenly that his nudity would give away his arousal if a spanking turned him on, and Cas’ hand nearly always turned him on. “Look, double it at home, okay? Cas, please. Triple it. Not here.”

“Doubled it is,” Cas replied. “But for using my name. And yes, right here. Anything else to say?”

They weren’t the only naked wolves in the room. Most of the alphas were running too hot to wear clothes between rounds. And none of them cared what Dean and Cas chose to do to keep themselves balanced, their engines revving hard enough to get it up over and over again.

One matronly alpha woman collected her packaged cookies and her tea and cleared out of the spot by the wall without speaking.

Dean sighed and rolled his shoulders. Then he ostentatiously postured as he placed both palms on the wall.

“No one’s watching you, my adorable show-off,” Cas taunted, amused. He studied Dean’s form for a moment, appreciating the lines of muscle. “No one but me, that is,” he amended. “I anticipate that one day you may simply ask me to slap your ass a few times. I look forward to that day, Pet.”

Dean scoffed rudely. “What fun would that be? Sir.”

Castiel stormed forward and let his hand fly. Dean braced and gritted his teeth, counting in his head. The swats echoed loud enough that everyone paused their conversations for a moment. Castiel put his hips into it, and Dean grunted, struggling to keep his chest off the wall. Damn the man. Cas passed twenty without slowing, rounded thirty as Dean’s eyes clamped shut, shot past forty as Dean’s arms began to shake, and rested finally at a solid fifty. The Alpha was out of breath, but Dean arrested a snarky comment about aging constitutions before it hit air.

“Wha’ happened to doubling it, Sir?” Dean asked shakily. He continued to face the wall. His stiffy wasn’t subtle.

Cas chuckled. “I would hate to deprive you your fun. Come sit with me.”

“Ah…Sir.” Dean looked down at himself.

“No one cares, Pet. Come here.”

Dean pushed off the wall and scurried to where Cas held an arm out to him. “You make everything better, Winchester,” he cooed as he pulled his husband to straddle his lap. Dean grinned and dove in for a not-so-professional make out session. Snacks could wait.

The hours passed slowly. Michael’s back ached from sitting in one position too long. His feet fell asleep. Missy appeared periodically to review his log and examine the data on his monitor. Unlike Jody, she never offered him feedback. She just chucked the binder back onto the counter, asked him if he needed to pee again, and then moved on.

Michael’s alarms blared with little warning, and his heartrate shot up as he pressed the call button to alert the staff. After that, he watched helplessly as a young woman thrashed violently on the bed, a seizure wracking her body, and her alpha attendant bravely risking his own safety to protect hers. He took a flailing arm across his temple as he straddled her hips, but he managed to secure her arms just as an emergency team rushed in. The alpha slid down to pin her legs beneath him, to stay out of the way and help bind her to the bed, and a nurse wedged an insert into her mouth to protect her tongue. They worked swiftly, urgent but not panicked. Michael panted in alarm, eyes wide, breath choppy, staring at the screen before him and chanting, “Come on, come on, come on,” under his breath. The physician in charge issued orders, and very shortly, the Omega was flipped onto her belly, the alpha was directed to get his ass in gear doing his goddamned job, and multiple injections entered the young lady’s bloodstream from syringes wielded on both sides of the bed.

Michael whimpered as he watched helplessly.

“Don’t forget you’ve got three rooms to watch, virgin,” the elderly monitor reminded him. He caught up on the other two observations quickly, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off his center monitor. The seizure faded as the medications took effect. The steadfast alpha above her never faltered in his thrusts, even as nurses wedged a pillow beneath the Omega’s hips and jostled them both. Michael couldn’t see her face, blocked by the staff, but he watched as her fingertips splayed out on the bed. She clutched at the bedding, at the railing, at a nurse’s scrubs. She was in pain, that much was clear, and Michael prayed she retained no memory of the event once it was over.

The alpha pressed his torso up high on both arms, leveraging his hips to deepen his reach. He threw his head back and groaned through clenched teeth. The effect was immediate. The staff relaxed, most of them stepping back a little. One nurse kept a hand moving through her hair and the doctor closed in closer to listen to her heart. The Omega lay utterly still, exhausted, her breath coming in long, stilted, jagged huffs. Her hair lay lank and sweaty around her shoulders.

Michael’s tracer lines dipped one by one back out of alarm range, leveling out slowly.

“You okay, pup?” the retiree quipped without looking.

“I’m fine,” Michael returned. His heartrate returned to normal as all of his readings leveled off. His hand shook as he marked the incident in his log. “That was close,” he added. “Almost waited too long.”

Natalie turned her head briefly to check on him. “Don’t dwell on it, kid. That won’t be the only hairy experience tonight. Stay sharp. You did good. The kid’s okay?”

“Yeah. She’s stabilized and back into trough phase. They pulled her through.”

“That’s their job, Michael. Don’t forget to keep doing yours.”

Eventually, Natalie was replaced by a short, stout man with a scraggly beard who only grunted at Michael’s greeting. Michael had found his rhythm by then. He’d monitored as his own Alpha rotated through, mindfully keeping the log accurate rather than ogling the man he had a not-very-secret crush on. Michael tried to attend to his job, but he couldn’t help noticing that Castiel-the-medical-alpha was a far cry from Castiel-the-Pack-Alpha. In the room before him, Cas had his wolf completely kenneled. He acted on need alone – the Omega’s need. He was efficient and thorough, with a tender touch once his knot locked and the fluids he’d injected deep into the Omega’s body brought Michael’s tracer lines back to midline. But he wasn’t Cas – not the Cas Michael knew. He was an alpha first, a doctor second, and a person barely at all. He was a therapist assisting a patient.

Michael couldn’t tear his eyes off the man, calm and decisive, every inch the alpha, even while confined in a tamped headspace. Michael missed a couple of data markers from the other two monitors, but when his eyes caught up, he found no harm done.

He’d assumed that since all three rooms started at the same time, that they would track together, granting Michael a solid break once all three couples lay knotted in repose, waiting for completion. He had little to do once the alpha shot his ameliorative spunk up into the harried Omega, and Michael closed out his log entry with final readings, but that looked-for break only came around after the very first round. Each couple remained knotted for a different length of time, and it took a doctor following each alpha’s departure a different span to examine the Omega and prescribe the next course of action. Soon, Michael had three monitors showing entirely different points in the cycle, granting him no break at all.

Often enough, it was Dr. Harvelle stepping assertively in once the alpha unknotted. She swatted Castiel maternally on his naked ass as the man passed her in the doorway. He grinned over his shoulder at her, boyish in his charm, clearly pleased to be back to playing an active role in a way that meant a tangible result. Ellen let him go, referring to her clipboard and pulling a Peliomometer from her pocket.

As the hours rolled past though, Michael began to view each encounter before him as desperately needed medical care rather than frenzied and outlandishly brazen sex. All the parts involved began to blur in his mind, reduced to factors in an equation. Once all necessary parameters for the equation were met, all of his tracer lines returned to their midlines, and he readied his binder for a new entry. He worried briefly that he might never find another penis attractive again, nor a plump breast, nor a dribble of slick, but he put that thought out of his mind for the moment. If Dean and Cas still enjoyed sex, then it must not be a difficult transition. But this… this wasn’t hot, except for when it had been Cas in that room. That got Michael’s attention, he had to admit. But this. The constant cycle of sweat and oddly-shaped bodies, of tan lines and receding hair lines, and body fluids and pubic hair – it was … a little repulsive, in fact.

Also a thought for another time. Not right now.

Michael had no idea how many Omegas in crisis the hospital was managing. What he saw in his three rooms was a carousel of desperation. Each Omega entered on the verge of catastrophe and then wheeled back out forty-five minutes later much more stable than they’d entered. But Michael knew the statistics. One round with a faceless alpha wasn’t enough to halt a Heat gone into overdrive. Still, Michael never saw the same Omega twice. Whoever was coordinating the flow of people through rooms had to be an octopus of sorts, an old-fashioned telephone operator; plugging in and pulling out to regroup, matching alphas who had rested long enough to re-set their refractory periods with Omegas reaching their peak temperatures.

Omegas must fill several wards somewhere off by themselves, monitored carefully as they rode out their cycles in pain, and shifted back into the processing rooms when their temperatures spiked and they were ready to go again. He couldn’t imagine what those wards must smell like.

Michael rubbed tired eyes and sipped from his cup again, only to slurp loudly and find nothing but dribbles.

“Up, virgin!” directed Missy at his shoulder. “Break time. Go get some air. Walk around. Eat something. Refill your cup. Don’t go near the east wing. You’ll carry the scent with you. There’s a snack bar at the end of the hall, and you can go outside through the double doors to your left. Get out of here. Don’t come back for thirty minutes.”

“My boards,” he protested, pointing out he had two active cases in mid-coitus.

“I’ve got these two. Go on, scoot!” Missy toggled the station back to inactive to keep new patients from being sent in, and she slid into his space once he stretched his legs and stood up. His whole body was stiff, and his eyes were blurry. Missy paged back through his logs before turning to his current page and picking up his pen. “You do good work, virgin.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, wondering how many hours before he earned his name back. Michael had never been a smoker, but standing out in the cold with a microwaved burrito gave him new respect for the habit. Something about the way the stress sat inside his bones and across his shoulders made him crave a cigarette.

“How many sectors are active, anyway?” he asked a weary-looking nurse in scrubs who stood out in the cold smoking lazily.

“Normally, just one. Tonight they activated all six.” The man’s dark hair fell over his eye, and he flipped it back with a toss of his head.

“Six!?” Michael wondered. “I’m in Ostrich. There are nine beds. You’re telling me there are fifty-four beds in use, and more patients in need of them than that? I haven’t seen the same kid twice.”

The nurse huffed a laugh. “Crazy, right? Where did they all come from? Not every sector has nine beds, but it’s still a fuck ton of desperate kids. Happens every seven years, so we have a Septennial plan. Funny thing though, the plan sits gathering cobwebs while new administrators who don’t know a cycle from their own asshole come in and tell us old-timers that were here seven years ago that it’s all a myth. They don’t staff up. They don’t warehouse extra supplies. They don’t put the town’s certified alpha contractors on notice. Nothing. And then, cycle after cycle, round after round, all hell breaks loose, and these morons are surprised all over again.”

The nurse dropped his cigarette on the pavement and crushed it out with his toe. “You new here?” he asked. “I’m Damien.”

“Michael. Yeah, I’m a volunteer. Got drafted by my Pack Alpha. He’s one of the plug-and-play alpha contractors. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I didn’t exactly grow up in the sticks.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t get a lotta news coverage, man. Most people don’t give a fuck about Omegas. Most Omegas cycle through their Heats just fine at home with their mates, or if they’re real young, with a family friend or Pack member. Some still tough it out with their own parents. The shrinks say there’s nothing damaging about taking it up the ass from your own dad, but…” Damien huffed. “My dad smells like anchovies. No, thanks.” He shivered at the idea, looking thoroughly disgusted. Michael had to agree.

“So the ones who end up here?” Michael prompted. They’d discussed it in class many times, but the reality was so much more visceral. Michael felt shook to his core.

“These are the poor sonsabitches who were unlucky enough to be close to coming of age without anyone safe to fuck ‘em back to ground level. Some of the Omegas here are older, swept up in the Septennial when they weren’t expecting their Heat yet and didn’t have an alpha lined up. Most are just barely sixteen. It takes an alpha once you’re sixteen. Folks still wanna debate about that, but I’m telling you, it’s a hard limit. Man, I’ve seen kids fifteen and three quarters go through a Heat with a hard dildo and a DVD and come out of it no problem, but once their birthday’s past, if there’s not an alpha jizzing up their channel, they’re playing Russian roulette with only one chamber empty. Not one Omega in ten survives more than two Heats alone once they’re sixteen.”

“No wonder some of them turn to their own parents,” Michael observed. “Better that than risk death … or chancing a random who could rape and murder you.”

“You’re not wrong, man. But, honestly, it’s not the randos with a danger kink you gotta worry about. It’s desperate lonely bachelors who’ll Mate an Omega without their consent that are the scariest. Some of the stories we get through these doors; it’d turn all the hair on your chest dead white.”

Michael found the wrapper of his burrito tightly fisted in his cold hand. He was shaking from the weather and the second-hand fear as Damien realized he’d gone too far. “Hey, man. You okay? Look, I can smell you’re Mated. You got nothing to worry about. Besides, it’s really just the young virgins who get took that way. Once you cross that first moat, age a little, get to know your own body and how to manage your Heats, you’re nowhere near as vulnerable. Nights like tonight, it’s good these kids have somewhere safe to go. We’ll take care of ‘em, man. No one’s going to wake up Mated here unless they showed up at our door that way.”

Michael made himself chuckle. “Surely there’s an occasional True-Mate Trigger. All the scents clinging to the place?”

“Oh, well, yeah, every now and then,” Damien agreed. “But most of the alpha contractors are Mated already. Not all, I guess, but most. There’s still the rest of the staff, I guess. We keep extra alphas off the wing as much as we can. Betas who have to be here wear respirators. First Heat is no time to go looking for your one true match. They’re sixteen years old for cryin’ out loud.”

“What’s the deal with those two, uh… the beta guards back at the entry point?” Michael made a slicing motion at his groin.

Damien laughed. “Oh, the eunuch twins? They’re rescues from an underground ring. The syndicate captured them as tweens, both of them. Castrated ‘em right after they Presented and raised them to work with the Omega ‘livestock’ in some scummy Omega fuckhole. It’s old news now. They’re cool. They aren’t brothers, but you wouldn’t get anywhere trying to separate them. They’ve worked here for years, and they’re funny guys. They love castration jokes.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You’d think. But, nah. They were too young when it happened to really know what they’d missed. So grateful for the rescue and all the rehabilitation Alpha Novak offered them that they’re pretty much the easiest-going chaps on the whole staff. Course, I wouldn’t cross them, if you know what I mean. They’re essentially bouncers here, and if they tell you to move your ass, I’d advise moving your ass.”

“Castiel rescued them?” Michael asked. He’d been told the rescue teams operated in secret. If the average joe on the street knew about it…

“No, man. He didn’t rescue them. He offered them a job and paid for their therapy while they were in rehab. I heard the chicks who actually pulled them out were some kinda ninja angels with killer bods and flowing hair and deadly aim. Omegas, the whole team.”

“Is that so?” Michael said noncommittally. “Sounds more like some beta’s wet dream to me.”

“Well, _somebody_ shot all the guards in the forehead and pulled every last sorry son of a bitch out of that basement prison. Maybe they weren’t all chicks or Omegas, but they weren’t no ghosts neither.”

Michael chuckled. “I need to get back in there. I’d hate to see what Missy does to volunteers who overstay their breaks.”

“No, it’s not pretty, man,” Michael’s new friend agreed.

But when he returned, red-cheeked and huffing from the cold, his station was manned by a veteran nurse, who looked embedded, and Michael was at a loss. He looked around, recognizing no one. He didn’t really want to interrupt, but he had about decided he had no other choice when a resolute voice called to him as a gurney slid by.

“Hey, you! I need a body.”

The owner of the voice took Michael by the bicep and steered him along beside the rumbling gurney with an unconscious naked sweaty blonde teenaged girl on it.

“Who, me?” Michael scurried to keep the rubber side down as he jogged to match the pace.

“You stand still with your thumb up your ass like that, kid, and someone’s gonna put you to work. Name?”

“Um, Michael.”

“All right, ‘Um, Michael’, you’re my in-room monitor for this one. You know anything about Secondary therapy?” She was blunt and coarse and abrupt, and she wasn’t looking at him at all. She put her back to the door into one of the rooms, and she heaved on the gurney as the orderly pushed, scraping Michael right off the side to trail awkwardly in behind.

“I’m in training,” he told her staunchly. “I’ve got two semesters left to go. I’ve never done rounds on my own, and I’ve never chaperoned a Heat before.”

The nurse smacked her lips, letting the orderly arrange the gurney beside the bed and transfer the patient. She looked Michael up and down, recognition flashing. “You’re Jody’s newest pup! I heard she laid you raw a month or so ago. Your welts heal up yet?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Michael answered sourly. “I’m right as rain.”

“Good. Look, freshman, if you’ve been doing rounds with Jody, you’ll do fine in here. All you gotta do is keep the patient as calm as you can, stand witness, keep outta the alpha’s way, and get them anything they need. If any of the alarms go off, you don’t do a goddamn thing, you hear me? The monitor outside in the hall will call for help. You’re here cause the lawyers say we need two bodies in the room with every cycling Omega. If something comes up that any goldfish with an average IQ can handle, then handle it. If you don’t know what to do, call for help. Your emergency button is right here at the door, but only push it if it’s you in distress, not the patient. Don’t, I repeat, don’t, under any circumstances, try to go back through the door we just entered from until we come get you. If an alpha gets a whiff from that hallway, we’re fucked. Got it?”

“Got it,” Michael told her.

She stared at him for a moment, a glare hard enough to make Michael wonder if she might be an Omega-Dom herself. “All right. So. This poor girl is in bad shape. She’s sedated for the moment, but the drugs are going to wear off in a few minutes. You see her shoulder? She’s been bitten. Mated against her will. If I caught the story right, it was her own Pack Alpha who did it, and the patient wants no part of a Mating with a woman forty years her senior and way past her prime. She was screaming bloody murder to be taken somewhere that woman couldn’t touch her, and had to be sedated for her own safety. None of that’s going to help when she wakes up still in the middle of her first mature Heat. You going to be able to handle all that, Michael? We’re not going to have to scrape you off the floor, are we?”

“No, ma’am. I’m fine.”

“Lord, I hope so. I can’t stay and babysit you, it’s still chaos out there, more coming in every hour. Come on, George.”

The orderly signed off the young Omega’s chart and handed it to Michael, pointing to where he needed to sign in. Michael took the clipboard and added his name before perusing the details. She’d been in Heat for six days. She hadn’t had an attendant for the first four, but as her condition turned dangerous, her Pack Alpha kindly stepped up to see her through. Unfortunately, the woman’s lust caught her up and led her not simply to Claim the Omega, but to Mate her too. Michael frowned. How did a spinster get to be a Pack Alpha in the first place? Wasn’t one of the perks of being Alpha the right to bring into the Pack whomever you wanted for your mate?

He checked the history outlined in the chart, pacing slowly as the girl slept on. She wasn’t any blood relation to her Alpha. That was irrelevant, Michael supposed, if she wasn’t planning to honor the Mating. There were ways, he knew, to all but sever an unwanted Mating. It couldn’t be dissolved entirely, but it could be stretched and twisted until it was barely perceivable, a therapy that could take years before the link remained little more than a kite string linking two people together, but it was better than being bound forever against your will.

Michael shivered again.

The blonde on the bed groaned and pulled her knees up, her fingers tightened into fists. Michael set the clipboard down on the counter and checked the various displays. She was stable, but her temperature was climbing steadily. Her face was flushed, and her eyelids twitched.

He leaned over her and gently stroked her hair.

She flinched.

“Shh. You’re okay, sweetheart. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe right now.”

Her eyes shot open, brown and accusing, circled with gold. “Where am I? Who the hell are you? You keep that bitch away from me!”

So much for a slow, groggy wakeup. She went from dead asleep to alert in seconds, scanning the room.

“She’s on the other side of a whole bunch of locked doors, Kate. You’re safe. My name’s Michael, and I’m Omega, like you. I’m here to help.” She struggled to sit up, but Michael didn’t back out of her way, blocking her from getting out of the bed. “Kate, you need to stay where you are. Your legs won’t hold you right now. Lie back, Omega. You’re still in Heat.”

“God, don’t remind me.” She fell dizzily back onto her pillow and covered her face with her elbow. “Jesus Christ, I feel like hell.”

Michael smiled. “You actually seem pretty good for your sixth day. You’re made of some world class grit, Kate.”

“Look. Omega.” She gritted her teeth and shot a hand down to rub at her crotch. “You’re cute and all, but if you don’t have a knot, I’m not interested. Can we save the small talk? I don’t know how to phrase this politely, but I’m not in a chatty mood. I need… Oh, fuck, I need…” Her fingertips sped up as her hips joined in the motion, and her other hand slipped behind her to press fingers, wrinkled from constant moisture back into her ass.

Michael looked over his shoulder. He knew there were screens on the alpha side of the room as well, monitors that signaled the alphas when to enter. He didn’t know how to stall if the alpha was late. “Um, yeah, I know. I’m no good to you. We’ve got somebody on the way. Hold on for me for just a sec. Don’t get up.” He didn’t remember there being a delay in the alphas’ arrivals when he was outside monitoring. A glance at the screen behind her shoulder told him she was already approaching the yellow zone. Someone should be here by now.

Michael edged toward the door, his hand out to the doorknob, his eyes watching to make sure she didn’t try to stand. The door opened as he reached it, and Michael found himself face to face with his own mate. Dean looked braced, though his jaw twitched a little. If Dean had known Michael was on the other side of that door, that explained the delay. This was gonna be… But Michael could stand it if Dean could.

“Everyone else is tied up or resting,” he whispered to Michael as he eyed the blonde wolf curled up on herself on the bed, beginning to lose herself in the pain and the heat and the throbbing. Her eyes locked onto Dean and held there. “I know it’s weird. You’re not supposed to be assigned as chaperone, man, not without a license. Can you do this? I need to know she’s not gonna get her throat ripped out.”

Michael scowled. “She’s already had a chunk taken out of her shoulder, alpha. We’re on _her_ side, remember? I’ve stashed my wolf. I’m good.”

“Good,” Dean repeated. “Had to check. I’ve got this, man. Hang tight for me, and keep watch. Things go sideways sometimes.”

“Dean, I will always watch out for you.”

“I love you too, babe,” Dean whispered in a hurry. He kissed Michael’s lips briefly and then made his way to the bed.

He wore a thin bathrobe, tied at his waist. He sat beside the Omega girl, and he touched her face gently. “Hey there, kiddo. Heard you’re not yourself right now.”

“No shit,” she groaned. “I need you to fuck me, and I mean now.” Her hand tightened around his wrist, her eyes pleading. Her voice held conviction. Sweat dribbled from her hairline, and she’d begun to pant slightly.

“Yeah, we’re gonna do that,” Dean comforted, placing a wide palm on her belly and massaging firmly. “In just a minute. I know it hurts. I need to make sure I understand where you’re head’s at right now. I need you to trust me, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. Not even a little bit. Promise me that if I do anything that hurts, you’ll say something, yeah?”

Michael was in awe of Dean’s control. The Heat scent filled the small room until Michael’s eyes watered, and though Dean’s pupils were enormous and his robe slipped open, allowing his engorged cock to stand out shamelessly, he was calm and deliberate with every move. He was slow, broadcasting every move, stroking her in unerotic places to get her accustomed to his touch. He held her gaze, proving moment by moment that he wasn’t going to lose control and cause her pain.

She stared into his eyes, transfixed and panting, blushing even beneath her flush. She was pretty, not simply in the base Omega allure of raw unabashed sexuality of a Heat cycle, but in clear, objective everyday truth. She was pretty, and she was writhing, and the scent of need began to replace the scent of fear she’d awoken with as the seconds passed while Dean massaged her body. His hands began systematically to rove closer and closer to her hot spots, nudging a glancing blow first to the soft skin of her breasts, then with light touches across her nipples, then down into the modest growth of hair at her groin. Always in motion, his hands introduced her to the comforting feel of him, and his eyes stayed locked with hers, reading her and speaking to her.

“Michael, take my robe, would’ja?” Dean spoke softly so as not to burst the hypnotic bubble he was building around the needy Omega. Michael stayed behind his mate, circling his waist to untie the fabric belt and slide the robe off Dean’s shoulders. Dean shifted, still holding her eyes, and put a knee on the bed, still moving slowly, intentionally.

“You’re going to be okay,” Dean promised. “It’s not as fucked up as it seems right now. We can help you, I swear. You don’t have to go back there when this is over. But first, we need to get your Heat under control. You ready?”

She nodded quick, certain little jerks of her head, and she spread her legs to him.

“Good girl. Don’t let me hurt you. You may be tender after your first time earlier, but I’m gonna be real careful. Tell me if anything stings, and we’ll find a different position.” Dean worked his way above her, centered, holding himself up with his arms. “Eyes on me, Omega. I’ve got you. I need to hit your channel, sweetie. I know it’s sore. I’ll be real careful. Let’s see if we can get your temperature down, okay?”

Without looking, Dean lowered his hips, feeling and aiming his way straight to her entrance effortlessly, years of practice guiding him. She groaned and closed her eyes as he slid in. Her hands shot up to hold him across the shoulders and he praised her softly. Dean pressed in slowly, watching her face, concentrating on what she felt like around his cock as he sank into her. She frowned slightly, tightening her fingers.

Michael could tell she was hurting, but the pain pulled her in opposite directions, and she gripped Dean’s back tight enough that he couldn’t go anywhere even if he’d wanted to. He shushed and praised her in a chanting litany, moving gently.

“Alpha, please,” she whined, lifting her legs up around his hips and pulling him in deeper, thrusting her hips into his. He let her move as she would, but he held himself to his glacial pace.

“We need to start slow, sweetheart,” he told her. “Your Pack Alpha did some damage, and I’m not gonna make that worse. Don’t worry, we’re getting there. Michael, babe, watch her O.T. tracer for me. Let me know if it goes above fifteen.”

“Alpha, please. I’m burning up!”

“Shh, I know, love. Ride with me, okay? Feel the pulse? Slow it down for a sec, and match my pace. Does it hurt at all?”

“Everything hurts!” she wailed.

He chuckled. “Okay, kiddo. I hear ya. Next round we’ll shoot for the top pocket and give your channel a break. Right now, we have no choice.” He’d been thrusting in deep and slow for a couple of minutes, watching for signs of distress, but her only distress was the Heat itself and the alpha’s infuriatingly controlled pace. Soothed that she wasn’t badly injured internally, Dean picked it up. “Here we go. Follow me. Hold on, Kate, I’m gonna take care of you.”

And with that, Dean decided that was enough talking. He picked up the pace and the power. His alpha emerged, red-flushed and sweating, tired of being stymied, and he began to pound into her. With a harsh grunt, he ducked his shoulder and tucked her leg right up over it, splaying her obscenely and gritting his teeth. Gone was the subtle, delicate tracing touch. Dean wrapped a hand around the back of her neck tight enough to get her attention, and he fucked her ruthlessly.

She screamed as his knot locked and his cock pulsed within her, coming hard, deeply alpha, and filling her with wet, sticky, soothing warmth. Dean coasted for a breath or two on the endorphins racing through him. He released her neck and kissed the reddened skin below her ear under his grip. He lifted his torso and slid a hand down her belly between them to stroke idly at her clit, watching her float on waves of pleasure, all the more powerful as they replaced brutal, agonizing cramps.

Kate pulsed her hips into the stroking of his fingers, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow and quick. Tears leaked from her closed eyes as she found a good rhythm and rode the touch to orgasm. And then she was crying in earnest. Her hands covered her face, and she sobbed.

Dean’s heart went out to her. He leaned down and left a soft kiss to her unblemished left shoulder, but he couldn’t repair the damage to her right. A square bandage covered the bite, but nothing could erase it. Kate was Mated now, like it or not, and no matter if she ever acquiesced to its pull and became a Pack Alpha mate in truth, she would never have a chance to Mate again.

Dean held her as she sobbed, watching helplessly as one pain replaced another. He arranged her to lie on her side, with most of their weight on Dean’s hip. He wrapped his arms around her hot, sweaty body, and he let her cry.

Michael produced a light blanket and a warm, wet cloth. He wiped her body down as well as he could, and then he covered her. He climbed up to sit beside her and rubbed her back in firm circles.

“Grab her some juice and something to eat,” Dean coached. “She needs to refuel. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”

Michael nodded and eased off the bed. “Do you need me to take any readings?” he asked carefully.

“Nah, the doc will take care of that after we untie.” He turned his attention to the Omega he was knotted to. Her tears had begun to fade, leaving her spent and still. Dean rolled backward and popped a couple of tissues from the box at his bedside. He cleaned her face and then accepted the juice bottle and cereal bar Michael handed to him. “Can you lean up a little, Kate?” he asked gently. “Let’s get some calories in you. It’ll help, I promise.”

She let him care for her, saying little. Her face bespoke a hopelessness that broke Michael’s heart. She ate mechanically.

“One more day of Heat, Kate,” Dean soothed, bracing her weight so she could eat and drink. “And then you’re home free.”

“Home,” she repeated dully. “I can’t go back home, alpha. I’m not tying myself to that asshole; I don’t care how bad it hurts. I trusted her, and look what that got me.” By the end of her statement, she’d gagged and doubled over, drawing her top leg across Dean’s hip and curling into the cramp in her core.

Dean frowned in concern. “Shh. Let’s save that kinda talk until you’ve got your body back under control. You don’t need to add any more pain right now.”

“I don’t care, alpha! I want it to hurt. I hope she’s in pain too, the bitch. Look what she did to me!” Her volume backed up her adamance, even as the pain in her gut brought a grimace to her face. Dean sighed, knowing that a mirror of Kate’s pain would be felt in her Alpha mate right now no matter how far she was. He couldn’t chide Kate for the impulse. Dean didn’t blame her at all.

“I know, kid,” Dean soothed, breaking off a piece of the cereal bar for her and feeding it right into her mouth. “And we’re gonna deal with that, okay? No one’s gonna make you go back. What she did was dead wrong, whether it was an accident or intentional, and she’s going to face the piper…”

_”Pay_ the piper, Dean,” Michael corrected softly. “The phrase is ‘Pay the piper’.”

Dean shot his mate a nonverbal version of, ‘shut the fuck up’ through his Mating-bond. He carded his fingers through her damp hair. “The point is, if my mate would let me finish, there are ways to dull the bond-link and get you almost back to new. We have therapies, Kate, and they work to make your Mating-bond nearly undetectable. It’s not painless, I’m not going to lie, and it takes time. But, kid, you don’t have to go back and be her mate.”

“Can you break it?” she asked hopefully. Her voice was grated and weary from the near week-long ordeal.

Dean took a deep breath, meeting Michael’s eye and then turning back to Kate. “No,” he said as straightforwardly as he could. “We can’t break it. And we can’t give you another shot at Mating. I’m sorry. But this isn’t the end of the road for you. We can stretch it and dull it until it doesn’t hurt anymore, and it’s not always pulling you to go back. There’s still a world of people out there for you to meet and find connections with. There are more ways to gel with someone you love than Mating. See my wedding ring?” Dean held his hand up and let her examine the Titanium band. “I married a guy I can’t Mate. There’s more than one road, Kate. Your life isn’t over.”

Kate closed her eyes and rolled onto her back to the extent that she could. “We’re not all Dean Winchester,” she commented dully.

Dean softened his tone. “Look, I’m not special. Doves and chipmunks don’t bring me breakfast in a sunlit room with rainbows coming through the windows. I fought for what I wanted, and I didn’t let anyone tell me what I could or couldn’t go out and get. I’m not gonna lie and say it’s not easier for an alpha than it would be for you, but hard or not, you don’t have to roll over and let some shithead Alpha take what’s yours and decide that’s all there is to it. So we’re gonna get you through this Heat, and then we’re going to move you somewhere safe and start legal dissolution proceedings to get you out of that Pack. We’ve got therapists and advocates who will help you consider all your options. You have options, kiddo.”

Kate sighed with a world of grief behind the breath, but an edge of steel ringed her pupils with a golden halo, and she nodded. “I don’t know what to do, Dean,” she admitted. “I planned to wait until I was nineteen and then put my scent out into the Mate-match program if I hadn’t found a TM by then. I wanted a family. I wanted pups. I dreamed of opening my own childcare center in the Pack compound, watching over all the pups in the Pack and helping with income by taking in pups from the public too. I had it all figured out. Now what do I do? Start all over?”

Michael sat back down behind her and touched her cheek. “Don’t try to solve it all now, Omega,” he urged. “Get some rest.”

“Will you guys stay with me?” she asked Dean, including Michael as well by grabbing hold of his hand.

Dean smiled. “Yeah, kid, I’ll see what I can do. Close your eyes and try to sleep a little.”

“Dean,” she said, taking hold of his wrist. “Thank you.”

He kissed her brow and wrapped an arm beneath her, pulling her to snuggle in close. “We’ve got you, sweetheart. You’re gonna be okay.”

In the far hallway after Dean’s knot slipped free and he’d donned his robe again, Dean led Michael by the hand to try to search Castiel out. This side of the block of rooms carried a far different scent – muskier and more cloying. Michael sneezed.

“Gesundheit,” Dean muttered.

They’d left the sleeping Omega in the care of a circulating physician who checked her condition and attempted to predict how many rounds she had left before she could be safely discharged. Dean instructed the doc not to move her just yet, warning him that she had special circumstances riding on her whereabouts, and she needed an advocate assigned right away. Dean wasn’t sure if her Pack might still be loitering about, seeking a way to bust her out and take her home, and he wasn’t going to risk it by allowing her to ride out her lulls in an open ward with other Omegas.

“What are we doing?” Michael asked as he trailed his mate. Michael grew weary as the night waned and dawn loomed heavy, but Dean seemed spry.

“We’re looking for Cas,” Dean repeated, offering nothing further. The alpha steered them both into a long dark room lined with cots, each separated by a flimsy partition. Alphas lay sprawled here and there, resting between rounds. Dean followed his bond-link and his nose, rounding Castiel’s cubby with a confident stride. He dropped Michael’s hand and approached the man who appeared to be asleep.

But Cas spoke without opening his eyes. “Dean,” he muttered, lifting a hand. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m awesome, Alpha,” Dean told him, lacing his fingers into Cas’ and climbing right onto the narrow cot next to the man. Cas huffed and scooted over a little.

“They’re not built for two, Winchester. If you collapse my bed, I’m taking it out of your paycheck and your ass.”

Michael hovered in the aisle, a little perplexed. Dean raised up to kiss his husband’s tired lips, earning himself a cracked open deep blue eye and a touch to his scruffy cheek. “Whatever you’re about to ask me, Dean,” the Alpha asserted. “The answer is no.”

“Just hear me out, C.J.”

“Dean…” Michael started and then stopped. Cas rubbed his face, swatted Dean lightly to give him some space, and then sat up.

“Talk,” he instructed with a peek at Michael.

Dean licked his lips. “You know the young Omega girl who came in with her Pack Alpha a couple of hours ago?”

“Dean, that describes half the Omegas in the building.”

“The one who was Mated without her consent. The blonde from the Harrister Pack. You did her triage,” he clarified.

“Right,” Cas nodded. “What about her?”

“She’s going to contest the Mating and probably file rape and infringement charges,” Dean told him. “We need to find her a safehouse. She can’t go back there.”

“No,” Cas agreed. “And she won’t. Intake marked her file already. Her Alpha has been taken in for questioning. Her case will be transferred to Social Services before she’s finished with her Heat, and they’ll find her a foster home. Don’t worry, Dean. She won’t be forced to return to that Pack. I doubt the rape charge will stick, but the infringement is enough by itself to win her a dissolution. Did you draw her on your last round?” Cas knew that Omegas under harsh societal pressures always struck Dean personally, and he expected that his husband probably needed a comforting touch.

“I want to foster her myself, Cas.”

“What?!”

“What?”

Cas and Michael both responded at once. Dean sat up, pulling up onto his knees and getting right in Castiel’s face. “Look, it’ll be good for her and for us. We need a nanny. She needs a home. She needs protection and the kind of hard-core therapy that not just every foster home can offer.”

“Dean,” Cas said tiredly, leaning into a hand braced on his brow, propping himself up on elbows that dug into his thighs. “I know it hurts. She got a shitty deal from someone who was supposed to protect her, and that sucks. We can’t take in every brutalized Omega we encounter. We aren’t going to let her flounder, but we can’t fix this. We can’t _un-_rape the girl. We can’t remove the bond. What we can do is clean the wound, see her through her Heat, find her a safe home, prosecute the offender, and work on stretching her link out until she can breathe again.”

“I want you to meet her, C.J. Talk to her. I think she’s ideally suited to our Pack. You’ll see if you talk to her.”

Michael took a step forward. “Dean, you only know her from one knotting, and she wasn’t in her right mind at the time.”

“That’s right,” Dean agreed fervently. “But even in the thick of the hardest Heat of her life, she showed grit and a rational mind. I’m telling you, fellas, this girl is a Winchester at heart. I can feel it.”

“You’re feeling aftershocks,” Michael told him uncertainly.

“All right, look,” Dean regrouped. “At least sign off on me sticking with her for the rest of her Heat. The kid’s traumatized. The last thing she needs is a parade of total strangers marching through getting a taste of her snatch.”

“Always classy,” Michael observed.

“She trusts me, Cas. She asked me to stay. I know I’m really not supposed to be here at all, and you said yourself that one alpha, give or take, wouldn’t make much difference. Sign me over to be her exclusive. She needs that security.” Dean ignored Michael’s shifting weight, and concentrated on Castiel.

“This isn’t my facility,” Cas reminded his husband. “I don’t have assignment rights here. And besides, every Omega here is in Heat-distress. This merry-go-round approach isn’t ideal for any of them, but there aren’t enough alphas to assign each Omega one of their own.”

“They’ll listen to you, man. You know they will. Tell them she bonded with me enough to feel safe for a spell. She’s not just distressed, man, she’s fighting a mate-rejection and emotional trauma that the others aren’t.”

Cas mulled it over.

“Damnit, Cas, she needs this. The girl was just raped by her own Alpha, Mated against her will. And her body isn’t done demanding more. Don’t make her face stranger after stranger at the most vulnerable moment in her life! We can’t save everyone, man, but at least we can do right by this one scared kid!”

“All right,” Cas agreed. “I’ll speak to Chelsea. Get something to eat and then go on back to her. But Dean?” He waited until he had green eyes locked onto his blue. “She’s not coming home with us.”

****************

Dean won the assignment he’d requested, but Michael found himself sent home to sleep until his next shift began. Michael left the alphas at the hospital and drove himself home after promising Cas he wouldn’t stop anywhere for any reason until he parked in his home garage, joking that he would even run stop signs and red lights if it would make the Alpha relax.

Michael dragged himself into the kitchen where Cain presided over a very informal breakfast. He dropped into his usual seat, attacked a hot bowl of oatmeal that appeared from nowhere, and then slouched up to his room with barely a word to anyone. Michael was under instructions to get as much sleep as he could and then get Cain or one of the betas to bring him back. He felt like he could sleep for a year.

He had a voicemail from Jody that needed to be returned first.

“Hey, sunshine!” she sang at him through the earpiece. “I heard you won your wings last night. They’re saying you did really well, Michael. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks,” he replied dully. “Where are you stationed?”

“I’m working the home field,” she told him. “I’m scheduled to clock in about fifteen minutes from now, so I can’t stay and chat. But I wanted to hear your voice, kiddo. I know that was rough. You okay?”

“Why didn’t you warn me about the Septennial, Jody?”

She sighed. “They covered it in class, Michael. I know they did. But, yeah, kind of caught us all flat-footed this round. We staffed up here at the Facility, and all the hospitals assured us they had everything under control. One of these times we’re going to learn not to believe them. I didn’t expect you to get pulled in or I would’ve prepared you. I’m sorry about that. But, Michael, no amount of prep really helps. It’s a baptism by fire, and there’s no way to get ready for it. The good news is you’ve met your service hours and then some for the semester. You’re getting great experience and working well under pressure. This is an excellent opportunity for you. Use it, okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Can the extra service hours carry over to next semester?” Michael’s sneakers hit the floor with a _clomp,_ and he collapsed onto his bed still fully dressed.

“’Fraid not. We don’t want trainees stocking up early and then riding out the rest of their terms without keeping a hand in the game. But every hour you’ve got your eyes on a patient is gold to you, Michael. It’s more than the state requires, but none of it is a waste. Oh, and if you stick around and volunteer as long as they can use you, I’ll replace a major test grade in the class of your choice with full marks. Deal?”

“You can do that?”

“I can do that.”

“Deal. Thanks, Jody.” Michael unbuckled his belt, unsnapped his jeans, and shimmied out of his pants with his phone tucked into his shoulder. He didn’t mention that he was already roped into helping for as long as they needed him, whether he wanted to or not. He suspected Jody knew that.

“Get some sleep,” she advised. “Eat a good meal before you go back. You’re doing important work, trainee; way more important than showing off on some stage.”

Michael humphed and hung up to the light peal of Jody’s laughter. He shoved himself upward when April slipped in with a cranky Alex in her arms. The toddler reached for Michael, and Michael took him into a warm embrace, burying his nose in the scent of his son’s hair.

“Hungry, Ace? O-Pop’s got you, baby boy. I missed you too.” Michael wormed his way out of one sleeve and shifted his tight undershirt to give Alex access to his nipple, and he dropped his head back to rest against the bars of his headboard. April rounded the bed and climbed up to help him all the way out of his shirts and snuggle in close to him. It would have been serene but that Alex slapped at her, unhappy at having to share his mother’s affection.

Michael caught his hand and held it. “No, son. Pups do not hit. Mommy is welcome here.”

Alex tore his suction free, spilling his mouthful, in his adamance. “No! O-Pah!” he demanded, curling into Michael and shooting daggers at April with his eyes.

Michael sighed wearily and heaved himself off the bed with the boy. “Alexander,” he corrected sternly, incorporating his wolf in a controlled way. “O-Pop told you. Mommy is welcome. Grownups decide who stays, not pups.” He set the pup on the floor in the corner, facing the room, and he took a couple of steps back.”

Alex wailed and threw himself forward, almost face-planting in the carpet.

“You’re tired,” April said. “Maybe I should go. We can catch up later.”

“No,” Michael disagreed. “He needs to get used to obeying. I’m not raising a brat, Pete. I can sleep later.”

“He’s not a brat,” she replied softly. “It’s a phase. He doesn’t dislike me, Michael. He just missed you. He didn’t sleep well. You weren’t here at bedtime. You weren’t here when he woke up.”

Michael stood his ground. “I know, but cause and effect are crucial to him right now. He needs boundaries or he won’t have the security he depends on. He’s not hurt, Pete, just dismayed. Please don’t go. I missed you as much as he missed me. I missed all of you. Please stay.”

She smiled. “All right.”

Michael shot a shy smile over his shoulder, warmed by her trust, and then he stepped up and scooped the furious pup off the floor. “Shh, punkin, it’s all right. O-Pop’s here. I’m not mad, buddy. You ready to try again? I know my boy’s hungry.”

Alex nodded vigorously as Michael wiped his tears away and held a tissue for him.

“Blow hard for me, champ.” Climbing back onto the bed, Michael arranged Alex back at his chest, making sure that the pup could still see April, and he deliberately wrapped his free arm tightly around her. “O-Pop’s sleepy, kiddo. Can you help me go to sleep?”

Alex eyed his Mommy across Michael’s chest, but he didn’t swipe at her again. Soon, he’d closed his eyes and set to the rhythmic suction of a practiced team effort with Michael’s thumb caressing his cheek.

“Good boy,” Michael murmured, losing himself for a moment in the wave of oxytocin that relaxed all of his muscles. “He’s not a brat,” Michael agreed quietly without opening his eyes. “And he’s not going to be one either, not if I can help it.”

April scoffed quietly. “You can’t control what he grows into,” she added. “He’s Dean’s son too. He stands a fair chance of developing a brat as he gets older.”

Michael leaned down and kissed her temple. “Maybe,” he agreed. “But I’m not talking about his wolf. I’m talking about while he’s a pup. We’ll be screwed if we let the pups take charge. There are too many of them. It would be chaos in no time.”

“The others all woke and ate early,” April told him. “I should have stuck to the schedule. I’m sorry. How do I get them back on track?”

“Nah, it’s okay, Pete. You met their needs. You did fine. They’re not damaged. The schedule is there to help, not to be hard and fast prison. Everything’s a mess right now. It’s okay to adjust.”

“I’m lost without you,” she admitted. “Jess and Kali help, but they don’t want to overstep, so they leave the decisions to me, and I keep looking around for you.”

Michael laughed softly. “Pete, you’re an amazing mother. You don’t need me. You need to learn to trust yourself. You’ve got better instincts than any of us for this. You just get tangled inside your own self-doubt.”

She sighed and melted further into his side. “I missed you so much.”

“I was gone for one night.”

She laughed. “Pathetic, isn’t it? But Cas was gone too, and the house feels too big when I sleep alone.”

“Would you like to nurse too?” Michael asked with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s helping Ace reconnect. Might help you too.”

She laughed again. “You would love that, wouldn’t you?”

He leered playfully, but it didn’t hold. He was too tired and too glutted on the ugly side of sex.

They descended into silence but for Alex’s swallows. Michael shifted him, situating him to latch onto the other side.

“Was it bad?” April asked after a time.

Michael didn’t answer right away. Finally, “We’re very lucky, you and I. Lucky where we ended up. Lucky we didn’t have a harder go of it early on. And you…I don’t know how you survived. There were a couple of seventeen-year-olds, but nearly all of the patients were sixteen. How the hell did you ever hold out? Why did you risk it in the first place? We could have lost you before we knew you existed. That thought kept running through my head all night long, watching those kids come through. There was this one blonde… And three kids died last night, brought in too late to stop the inevitable. Pete, I could have lost you, and I never would have known.”

April stroked Alex’s hair a couple of times, but the pup waved her off, and she stopped.

“I had to, Michael. I can’t tell you how I knew, but the Universe had a direction for me, and I knew I had to hold out. I couldn’t see where I was going, but I knew it wasn’t part of the plan for me to stay there and teach piano to bored pups. And I didn’t know there were safer options. I thought my choices were to submit to Mating someone I didn’t love or get my own father lost enough in my hormones that he forgot who I was. Or hold out and get through it by the skin of my teeth. Do you think there will be better options for our pups, Michael? I don’t want any of them to face the choices I had. They weren’t choices at all. What if the alphas insist on making our pups go through that? What if we can’t make them understand?”

“Shh, Shh. Don’t worry, Pete. They understand. Trust me. They’re both still up at the hospital knee deep in desperate, feverish Omegas. They understand.”

“Oh-Pah,” Alex said with a dozy expression as plump slack lips pulled away. He planted his index finger in the middle of Michael’s throat.

“You got that right, Ace,” Michael crooned. “And now it’s time for O-Pop to go to sleep. Would you like to stay and nap with me? No wiggling, now. Just sleeping.”

“Nooo!” Alex struggled his way upright and crawled out of Michael’s lap toward April. She grinned and caught him.

“Ah, now I’m your person again,” she laughed. “I see how you operate, mister. I’m on to you.”

She stood up and carried Alex with her around the bed, leaning over to give Michael a slow kiss, encumbered by interfering toddler fingers. But she pressed on anyway, easing Alex to her other hip so he couldn’t reach.

Michael shuffled lower into the bed and pulled his many layers of blankets up to his shoulders. “Night, Ace. Night, Pete.”

“Oh-Pahp!”

“That’s right,” April agreed. “O-Pop stayed up all night long, and now he’s sleepy. But he loves Alex, and he loves Mommy, and he loves Emma, and he…” Her voice faded and disappeared as the door clicked shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other news, the next chapter flowed from this one, so it's partially complete. I am still at home, building up strength, trying to figure out how to get a job reassignment without losing the job altogether. I'm good though. Feeling so much better. Thanks a million for all your kind words. I love you too.
> 
> Hugs to the Pack!


	11. Thursday, January 24, 2019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel put his foot down, right? I mean, he did. We all heard him. "She's not coming home with us," he said. 
> 
> Hmm.
> 
> So, there's that. But the Alpha isn't as off his game as he seems. He's got big plans for the new recruit, and it seems the new recruit has big plans as well.
> 
> All this and a Winchester-sized reckoning on a Winchester's birthday. When do one's thirties begin? At 30 or at 31?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the comments and observations over the last few chapters. They're so, so appreciated, as are all of you. We're so deep in the weeds of this story that I'm really digging hard to get the plot moving again. Next chapter is where the pace picks back up. Big stuff coming. I swear.
> 
> This chapter is for Andi4. I know you need your Sammy fix.

“This will be your room,” Dean said as he set a nearly empty duffel just inside the door of the room next to the nursery. It had its own bathroom and a little nook with a rocking chair near the window. Kate followed him in slowly. “Like I said,” he continued. “You take your time. Take all the time you need. Dinner is at seven. You’re welcome to join us, but if you’d rather, we can get you a tray and let you stay up here for a while. Just…please understand…whether this works out long term or not, while you’re here, this is your home. Be at ease. Make yourself comfortable. Only our bedrooms and the offices downstairs are off limits. If you want to find a hole to disappear into, the Pool house out back is empty all winter.”

“And the pups?” she asked cautiously with a hand on the sheer drape in the window. Her room overlooked the side yard, out toward the duck pond.

“Right next door,” Dean answered. “Look, Kate, no one’s expecting you to jump right into anything. You don’t owe us a thing. If you find that the job suits you, and we all feel comfortable with it over time… I mean, it would be an incredible bit of serendipity if your need for a new home and our need for a nanny lined right up perfectly, but no one expects a miracle. The world rarely works that way. Don’t feel you need to force anything. We’re not going to chuck you out on the street no matter what.”

She smiled softly, watching Portia tormenting the ducks.

“I have … no idea what to think or what to feel right now, Dean,” she admitted. She seemed calm, but he’d seen her naked in more ways than one already, and he’d come to learn that her mask hid a great deal of turmoil.

“I know,” he told her. “There’s no rush. It’s going to take some time to work through what’s happened to you. It’s going to take time to unravel enough of it to even get to the point where you can look at where you are instead of where you’ve been. Even longer before you’ll be ready to look toward where you’re going. Just know, kid, you’re safe here. There’s no safer place in the world than right here.”

She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were chilled, and she nodded mutely without turning from the window.

“Your lawyer will be here at two,” Dean reminded her regretfully. “I’ll have someone come fetch you. We’re going to have one of ours sit in as well. I hope you don’t mind. There are…complications to consider. Don’t worry, Kate. We’ve done this before. We know what we’re doing. We’ll try to keep it short and painless. Promise.”

“You’ll stay with me for that?”

“The whole time, kiddo. Right beside you.”

She nodded and turned finally, facing him bravely. An Ozzie in a house she didn’t know, her only ally a Deep alpha with beautiful eyes, Kate couldn’t allow herself a moment of weakness. He was kind, and he’d touched her with a tenderness that wasn’t strictly required, but he was alpha. She didn’t expect she’d ever be able fully to trust another alpha. Not fully.

“What does your mate have to say about you taking in a stray? You talk a good game, alpha, but if I’m here over his objections, that doesn’t strengthen your argument very much.”

Dean ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Michael’s on board, Kate. He’s…wary. I won’t sugarcoat it. But he’s in, and he’s here for you too. Michael’s reservations aren’t about you, Omega; they’re about me. He thinks I’m overextending myself, and he’s probably right. But if Michael and I share the responsibility of taking you on as our ward, team up to make sure your needs are all covered, we can do this. And he’s game for that. I’d like to see you lean on him if you can. He can offer you things no alpha has access to.”

She sighed. “I always wanted to be someone’s senior project.” Her sarcastic tone bit with resentment, but then she shook it off. “No, I don’t mean that. You’ve been very kind, alpha. I’m grateful.”

Dean aborted a step forward. She didn’t need him that close. Not right now. “You don’t owe us any bootlicking, Kate. It’s okay to be pissed. Is Michael using this mess to gain some experience? Yeah. Definitely. Does that mean it’s not genuine? You’ll have to answer that for yourself. Give him a chance though. All right?”

“Thank you, Dean. I’ll see you at two.”

He nodded and turned to go. “By the way,” he added in the doorway, noticing that she’d stiffened when his body blocked her only exit. She took an unconscious step toward the window, despite being too far from the ground to use it as a safe exit. He moved backward until he was in the hall and not strictly blocking the door. He pointed down at the floor. “You’re directly above April’s conservatory. You can probably hear her play from here. If you want, you’re welcome to go down there and talk to her. She’s not much older than you. And she’s nice, most of the time.”

“She’s going to think I’m moving in to steal her children… or her boyfriend,” Kate guessed with an air of dread. “I don’t want to steal anything, Dean.”

“No, Kate. I talked to April myself. She’s not like that. And, hey, this isn’t really my story to tell, but you need to understand a little bit of where she’s coming from. The thing is, April came close to taking an unwanted bite herself. She held out as a virgin until she was nearly eighteen. I know you can imagine how excruciating that must’ve been. She was damn lucky she survived at all. She doesn’t resent you, Omega. She’s willing to give you a chance. She’s young and Ozzie and overwhelmed in a house full of old men, and she’s lonely on top of everything else.” Dean kept his tone level, but his alpha had the bit in its teeth, and he exuded authority and security. “Now, nothing on earth can force you two to be friends if that’s not in the cards, but you and she both have a lot of power to give it a good, honest shot.” He paused to let his words sink in, and then he added, “There’s no rush though. Take your time. Don’t feel like you need to perform for us. It’s okay to be unsure right now, kid. Just, maybe don’t dismiss the idea right away. We’re not without our flaws, Kate, but we’re good people for the most part. Nobody’s going to rush to judge you.”

“Dean, I’m grateful to you and your Pack. Really, I am. But I’m so lost right now, I don’t know which way to turn. I feel so fucking scared, I’m jumping at my own shadow, and I don’t trust myself not to lash out at someone, even someone who’s trying to be nice. I don’t deserve ‘nice’. I don’t deserve to be here. I broke the cardinal Ozzie rule. I ran from my own Pack, from my own Dominant, from my own mate. I’m useless, and I’m broken, and I don’t even know yet if I’m pregnant.”

Dean strolled slowly back into her room, broadcasting his intent, and he held his arms wide, not demanding, simply an offer, and she dove into him, holding on tightly. “You’re not broken,” he told her decisively. “You’re not useless. You didn’t break any rules, kid. They did. They broke all the cardinal rules, not you. They were supposed to protect you. Keep you safe. Give you a home where you could thrive. You were supposed to be able to trust them. I know you’re scared. I know you’re hurting. And, Kate, if you’re pregnant, we’ll sit down and talk through all your options. It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone, Omega, and I’m not going to let anyone hurt you like that ever again.”

“Why me, Dean?”

He pressed her back so he could look into her face. “Because I married a rich dude, and I have more resources than I know what to do with, and I can.” He was hoping for a chuckle but had to settle for a small smirk. Kate added an eye roll and turned her back to lift her duffel onto the bed.

Dean quirked a half-smile and then nodded to himself and disappeared.

***************

“You’re not still steamed at me,” Dean prodded as he trailed Cas down the Facility hallway. “It’s the perfect solution. You’ll see. She’s awesome, man. Feisty. She’s a little like Claire in a way. You just have to get to know her, that’s all.”

“Dean, save it,” Cas quipped shortly. “Yes, I’m still _‘steamed’,_ as you put it.” Cas’ finger quotes would never not be adorable. “If I’m beholden to you to seek your input where significant decisions are at hand, then you’re most certainly under the same expectation from me. Regardless of how this plays out, you did an end run around me, and I’m not letting that go without an accounting.”

Dean licked his lips and then pressed them together. The look Cas leveled as he held the classroom door for his husband was one Dean wanted nothing to do with. But bravely, he met his Alpha’s reproving eye. The look told Dean in no uncertain terms that they hadn’t finished discussing Kate.

Most of the panel was present already. Dean sighed and peeled off to take his place along the long table, set facing a single chair out in the middle of the room by itself. He didn’t understand why Cas had convened the whole leadership team for a Contractor Certification review. Usually, Dean sat those with just his training team, a couple of Contractor leads, and Benny.

“We’ve a great deal to accomplish this afternoon,” Castiel announced, grabbing everyone’s attention and silencing the room. “So let’s get started. First up is Maximillian Banes. Balthazar, would you please show him in?”

“Sure, Alpha,” the Omega said as he slipped out of his chair on the end and opened the far door with the candidate’s name on his lips. Max strolled in looking nervous but resolute. He stood next to the chair until Cas invited him to sit.

Cas introduced the proceedings to him as if he did this every day, cutting right to the point. “Max, you’ve performed well in all of your training courses. The only barrier to your certification now is this panel. It’s critical to the ACRI mission that every one of our contractors shares our goals and our values. Right here is where we establish that for the record. I warn you that we have had candidates fulfill all prior requirements for the post who nevertheless failed to establish themselves as ACRI material in the final interview. This is not a ritual discussion. It is a critical part of your evaluation. Please be advised that your responses to our questions are considered by this Facility to be binding. Should you, in future, display behaviors that conflict with the core values you declare to us here today, you will be held accountable for that discrepancy. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” Max replied clearly.

“Don’t be nervous, Omega,” Cas told him. Dean scoffed quietly, rolling his eyes. First the Alpha scares the kid with a threat to ream him if he wavers from the high-ended words Cas was about to pull out of him, and then he says not to be nervous.

Cas leaned forward and shot a hard look down the table. Dean rolled his shoulders and focused front. Castiel sighed and shuffled his notes.

“Benny,” he announced. “He’s all yours.”

What followed was fairly routine, despite the grandiose opening. The contractors operated under the Behavioral Department – Benny’s domain, so Benny handled most of the proceedings. Benny played video excerpts from Max’s final exam scenes, discussing strengths and weaknesses, pointing out where bad habits lingered and where a fine instinct led him well. Benny noted with a wry tone how Max’s striking green eyes kept track of the camera as it moved and seduced the lens as fervently as he did his scene partner. The panel chuckled in light amusement. The kid was cocky, flirtatious, and impertinent as he worked, but he had a commitment to his scenes that worked well, despite his cheek.

Dean’s department had led his training, so he took a fair number of questions as well. Max fielded them calmly, with an assurance that told everyone in the room he was a true veteran. He didn’t stumble over his answers, and he didn’t back down when someone on the panel pressed into responses they hadn’t expected. He saw things from the perspective of a young man whose safety hadn’t always been a foregone conclusion, and he rarely trusted that the ACRI’s protocols were entirely sufficient to protect Omega or Sub contractors. For every assurance they offered, Max gave them two or three hypotheticals that were realistic enough not to disregard out of hand.

Once the panel’s questions were spent, Cas took over again.

“Very nicely spoken, Omega. I believe I speak for the team when I say you’ve shown yourself to be a good fit for our Facility. What’s more, I want to thank you, on behalf of the Lawrence site, for your hand in convincing the unaffiliated sex workers of eastern Kansas and western Missouri to place themselves under a safer umbrella. You and your sister have saved lives, my friend, and you are to be commended for that.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you. They didn’t all follow us, but we were able to convince most of the ones who aren’t addicts. The ones still walking the streets wouldn’t have passed your health screening anyway.”

“Quite unfortunate, but a concern for a different panel,” Cas told him haughtily, evoking images of secret elvish meetings to which hobbits aren’t invited. Dean squelched his bratty snort, but barely. Jo smacked his thigh under the table.

“It’s your turn, Max,” Cas continued, still channeling _Middle Earth._ “What questions would you ask of us? Understand that the leadership team’s doors are always open to you, but you won’t have many chances to address all of us at once. Now is your opportunity to be heard.”

Dean glanced down the table at Cas and then looked past him to Bobby. Both alphas had an odd glint in their eyes. They were up to something. Closer to Dean, Benny was studiously scribbling notes. Billie looked bored.

“Yes, sir,” Max said, leaning forward. “There is something, if I may?”

Dean took in the heavy tone of the room. Something weighty was in the air, and clearly, Bobby and Cas both knew what it was. He focused back on Max. The Omega’s green eyes pierced, even from six yards away. When Cas gestured for Max to continue, the man lowered his gaze, clasped his hands, and centered his thoughts briefly. He looked up again and looked straight at the Alpha as if he had a private audience; as if no one else in the room mattered.

‘Perceptive kid’, thought Dean, leaning back to listen.

“Sir, your approach to adolescent Omegas, the company line that says they should seek training when they mature, get tested once they’re of age – even lose their virginity to some random Keller panel – it’s wrong. It’s dangerous. And it needs to be updated. You need to write new laws lowering the age of consent – maybe just for Omegas, maybe for all wolves. I don’t really care about the betas. Alphas have a hard go of it, I know, but it’s the Omegas who’re really in the soup here. Omegas need a lower legal age of consent and harsher laws for their guardians if the kids wind up in Heat-distress at sixteen.”

“Interesting,” said Cas, steepling his fingers and fairly radiating potential energy. “Go on. Lower the age of consent to what age, exactly?”

Max appeared oblivious to Castiel’s heightened state, but he answered the question, taking it at face value. “Look, right now, we’ve got a legal age of consent set _at_ sixteen. But that’s too late. It sets kids up to get to their first mature Heat still virgins, terrified out of their minds, horny enough to try to get the family dog to fuck them, and primed to be victimized by some alpha with no self-control. It’s too late, I’m telling you. I’ve seen it again and again. Lots of kids don’t wait, no matter what the law says – betas, alphas, even some of the neutral Omegas sneak off into private places and do what wolves do – but the Ozzies, most are trying their damnedest to behave themselves, make their Alpha proud, obey the house rules. But then they turn sixteen. They came to me on the street, desperate for something I can’t give them and putting themselves right into the meat grinder that chews up virgins and spits them out broken.”

Max took a deep breath and grounded himself again. “These kids…they’re trying to graduate high school, start college courses, make something of their lives that isn’t only about sex, and they have to compete against betas and apes who have nothing close to the kind of burden Omegas are saddled with. Alphas have it rough too, I get that, but I remember being fifteen and scared. I remember dreading my first Heat after I turned sixteen, knowing full well it was gonna be hell. But there’s no _legal_ way to prepare for it. You’re not legally permitted to experience what a knot feels like until you come of age, and once you do, within your first three months of being legal, BOOM, you’re panting and rolling around, spiking a fever, and desperate for a knot, any fucking knot! And if you’re not ready for that, you die! You get to choose between dying in a fever with hallucinations while your blood boils or popping your cherry with whoever smells you first while you’re out of your mind in a hormone bath. That’s a shitty choice, Alpha!”

Max calmed himself visibly. The panel sat mute, waiting him out. Finally, Cas leaned forward onto his forearms. “What would you change?” It was a charged question, and Dean understood now. Max had been carefully groomed without Dean’s realizing it. Cas had plans for this Omega. Dean couldn’t fault his choice. The guy was smart and experienced, charismatic. He’d seen the rough side of the coin and come out into the sunlight with all his knowledge, and he had the energy of a crusader.

“Two things,” Max said at once. “A legislative change and an ACRI expansion. First, lower the age of consent to fifteen. Fourteen would be better, but that might be a hard pill to sell to Congress.”

“We aren’t legislators, Max,” Bobby reminded the candidate, but Max rolled his eyes.

“Yes, you are,” the Omega retorted. “You may not sit in the big leather chairs and cast the votes, but that doesn’t mean you don’t pull all the strings.”

Bobby shared a look with Cas. Cas shrugged and raised his eyebrows slightly before facing Max again.

Max went on. “Look, I know what goes on in the big Traditional packs. Packs with multiple generations in one compound, with multiple bloodlines all under the same roof. You guys can’t hide that shit from those of us on the street. You’re not sending your own sons and daughters into their first real Heat with an unbroken hymen. You don’t advertise it, but you allow nature to take its course behind your big iron gates. If it doesn’t, and the clock’s running down, you take care of business yourselves. It’s not the Omegas from big, rich packs who showed up at your clinic last week in danger of burning up. And damnit, I don’t have an issue with the way you do it. Your Omegas are groomed from the moment they Present. They’re taught and trained and they know their own bodies. They know what to expect, and they get the chance to experience sex somewhere safe with someone they trust; with someone who cares about them like family. They get to do it outside of their Heat. They get a mentor, not a fucking rapist.” Max chewed on his lip for a moment, clearly gauging how fervent he should get.

“And Alpha, _that’s_ the way every Omega should be raised!”

Cas shook his head. “I must take issue with your assumptions that there is a tradition of grooming in the larger packs. I’ve not seen that as a culture in my own experience, at least, not in a healthy way.”

“Alpha,” Max interjected. “Any parent or Pack Alpha who allows their own Omega to reach their first mature Heat without arranging a safe experience for them should be charged with neglect! We just had a nightmarish Septennial cycle, and we’ve learned nothing! How many unwanted pregnancies? Matings? How many terrified Omegas had to experience sex for the first time with a total stranger in a hospital bed? How many teenagers died last week for no reason?”

Max’s words reverberated in the room, highlighting his volume through the utter silence that followed.

“That’s one,” Cas reminded him. “You said there were two points. We legislate. An adjustment to the laws governing adolescents to allow lawful sexual encounters at a younger age and criminalizing a guardian’s failure to prepare for the Omega’s impending majority. What’s number two? What’s this ACRI expansion?”

Max licked his lips and cast a furtive glance down the table, realizing perhaps for the first time, that he had the riveted ear of everyone onsite who had any power.

“Open a school for young Omega teenagers,” he said simply.

Benny laughed. “Son, we’ve got one of those, or didn’t you get the tour?”

“No, alpha. Not for wolves sixteen and up. One for fourteen to fifteen-year-olds. I called it grooming, and I know that word has…connotations. I’m not suggesting we churn out sex slaves. I want us taking in boarding students, kids under sixteen, kids coming up on the big change. I want them to learn themselves, learn that sex doesn’t have to be scary, give ‘em a chance to fight off a rapist if they have to, learn how to recognize what pre-Heat feels like and make the appropriate preparations. I want to staff this school with…with…” Max struggled. He blew out a breath. “Look, in the wild villages, what do they do with young wolves? Not just the Omegas, ALL of their adolescents. They don’t leave their coming of age to chance, do they? They have a special cadre of young adults who are old enough to have the right experience but young enough to remember how tough it is to be a kid – young enough to retain the _cool factor_ of a young adult. Mentors. Coaches. Instructors. Whatever you wanna call them. Bring in the cool ones, the hot ones, the ones that teens gravitate to. Make sure they’re trustworthy. Train them to keep the kids’ best interest at heart. God, just give these poor kids a fighting chance not to get fucked by this fucked up world before they’re even mate material!”

Benny cocked his head. “And how would you implement this school of yours?”

“Uh, well, alpha, I, um, I have a lot of ideas. It’s probably not my place. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I worked intake last week when the Omegas started flooding in. Some of those kids…their eyes are gonna haunt me forever, sir. Implement? Look, it’s all about recruiting. If we draw the right people to the project and let them design it, we can end the Septennial Heat-gluts from ever overwhelming another hospital. Omegas can cycle at home or in a contractor’s care; with someone they’ve chosen instead of luck of the draw in a clinic. Recruiting is where you start. We need the right planners, the right design from the start, and we need the right contractors.”

Dean marked the Omega’s frequent use of the word, “we,” a very good sign. “Max, what do you plan to do if we say no to your ideas?” Dean asked, enthralled. It was an academic question. They weren’t going to say no. That new expansion was already in the planning stages. Curriculum additions to teach young Dominants and alphas to manage an Omega’s first tentative steps into sexual maturity were already being added to the standard coursework. Dean had no doubts now that Max had been carefully groomed himself, groomed to become a champion of the young and vulnerable. He had no doubts that a carefully worded question dropped now and then during training hadn’t led him toward a trajectory he never would have dared on his own. A glance past Bobby to the end of the table told him that Balthazar was in on the game too. As lead Omega contractor, Balthazar had more contact with the trainees than anyone. It came as no surprise that Cas would’ve tapped the irreverent veteran. No surprise at all.

That left Dean feeling perplexed – concerned might be a better word. Dean had known Cas wanted an Omega or two on the implementation boards, and poking at likely candidates until one of them perked an interested ear was so very Cas that Dean felt a bit dim to have missed it. But… Cas had culled and shepherded a rookie ACRI Omega contractor into a champion of the young and vulnerable, and he did it without cluing the kid in at all. He did it without Dean noticing at all, although it appeared that Dean was the only one still in the dark. But, if Cas was still sharp enough to pull that off while he professed to have had no idea what Dean had been up to when he asked to mentor Michael during the Septennial when any fool knew alphas and Omegas would be immediately separated... ? And after that, he claimed having had no choice but to accede to Dean’s application to foster an orphaned Omega right in their home where everyone Cas loved resided. As if the application itself was binding, and Cas had no say.

In what universe did Castiel James have no say?

Something wasn’t adding up. Cas wasn’t broken. His chess-player’s acumen was obviously as sharp as ever. But then…why drop the ball on his own husband? Twice!

Max’s answer broke Dean’s musing. “Then I plan to regroup and try again with someone else who might have the means,” he answered boldly. “You and your ACRI values and your mission statement, it’s all about protecting the vulnerable, giving stability to those who can’t stabilize themselves. At its core, it’s about turning Omegas into people, not breeding cattle. If you really mean that, then you have to admit I’m right. Just ask yourselves, those Omegas who showed up at the hospital and the clinic last week; what if that had been your daughter? Your son? Would you ever allow your own pups to face that kind of risk? Will you? Will you act like you didn’t see it coming and fret and moan over why isn’t she coming out of it this time? People who know where the limit line is face a tough choice, but at least they have a choice.”

“You’ve given us a great deal to think about, Max.” Cas was back to his usual Alpha self, down a couple of energy levels from the one that stoked Max’s embers. “I congratulate you on your certification, and I welcome you to the ACRI staff.”

“Thank you, sir. And my ideas? Lemme guess. _‘We thank you for your input. We’ll consider it in due time’?”_

Cas chuckled. Benny did too. Dean pitied the boy a little. Max had no idea that he’d bitten a baited hook and run with it.

Benny answered. “Max, despite the fact that your final exam scenes look more like a PornHub upload, you passed every test with flying colors. As for your suggestions…” Benny smirked and shrugged as he glanced down at Castiel. “The preliminary sketches for an extension to this Facility are already in the works. What we lack is someone to spearhead the design and implementation of our adolescent training wing. I wonder, where do you see yourself in five years, Omega?”

Max’s mouth fell open. “Spearhead? Me?”

It was Bobby this time. “We have engineers, kid. We have architects and attorneys and lobbyists. What we don’t have is a visionary. Now, you can say no. That’s fine. You’re a hell of a contractor, even if you can’t stop eye-fucking the camera. Maybe someday you’ll work your way up to this guy’s job.” Bobby waved a thumb toward Balthazar. “Or you can take a really big leap into something that’s not even built yet and put your personal stamp on forging a brand new program. It’s your choice.”

“I’d be part of a team, and they would listen to what I have to say?”

“They will,” Castiel confirmed in a tone that said that if they didn’t, they would face the Alpha directly. “Max, we’re not searching for someone to join the team; we’re searching for someone to lead it. And what’s more, along this career path is a shot at joining the Omega Oversight Committee with jurisdiction over the entire Keller-ACRI complex. That’s down the road a good ways. But it’s a very real possibility if you do well at this assignment.”

“Holy fuck,” he muttered by accident.

Dean laughed as the Omega blushed. Dean had known Cas was scoping for an Omega to add to the planning team for the new wing, but he should’ve known that Cas had his eye on Max. He had to admit it was a good fit, from everything he knew about the street-walker-turned-advocate. Max had been slow to sign on, but once inside the turnstiles, he’d thrown himself so thoroughly in that he’d become a brutal critic of every point where the ACRI hadn’t yet covered a weakness.

Better Max than Michael.

And no matter what Bobby OR Cas said about his choices, Max was on Castiel’s radar now. It no longer really mattered what career path Max intended. He would find himself herded toward a premiere spot as Castiel’s figurehead whether that’s what he wanted or not.

He was plenty pretty enough to be a figurehead with his café au lait skin and his brilliant green eyes – striking beauty on top of ambition and brains. Cas was no newbie to the public relations game. He knew what sells and what doesn’t. And Cas had no compunctions with playing dirty if that’s what it took to win.

“I need to think about it,” Max stammered.

“Take all the time you need,” Cas soothed. “Sit in on some of our planning meetings. We’re not going to rush this project. You have time.”

Dean wasn’t surprised when most of the panel packed up after Max’s interview and skipped off to pressing schedules elsewhere. Dean shared an amused look with Benny and Sam, both of whom were on the usual review slate, before cueing Balthazar to call in the next candidate. Dean wondered if Max had any idea what was coming down the pike for him. Meanwhile, there were still nine other candidates to interview, all of them recruits who’d followed Max off the streets of Kansas City, all of them fine contractors in their own rights, five of them Omegas. Dean grinned at Balthazar, both of them relieved that the scarcity in the Omega ranks was easing at last.

“Julian,” Dean said cheerfully. “Welcome, dude. Have a seat. This part is a breeze after your final exam.”

Cas hadn’t even said goodbye to Dean on his way out, the jerk.

***************

“We’ve never really discussed it, you know,” Dean observed as he backed Castiel’s car out of the Alpha’s designated parking spot in front of the employee entrance. “We’re a long way from having our own pups coming of age, C.J., but we do need a plan. Max was right about how the big packs handle their young Omegas. Nobody likes to admit it, but it’s true.”

Cas sat beside him with his head buried in papers balanced on his lap like always. Work never really ended for Cas. But he was listening.

“Mm, yes, some of them. It helps to diversify the bloodlines in a pack to allow for the kind of mentor relationship he alluded to. And while they at least avoid the utter neglect of the Progressives, a lot of the grooming they’re doing is sketchy at best. Too many of the Ultra-Traditional packs tie the Omegas’ emotional needs to their physical and developmental needs, resulting in a level of dependence that is unwarranted and abusive. The Ultra-Traditionalists create an artificially – or, rather, an unnecessarily – traumatic coming out experience for their youth. Grounding them in trauma at sexual maturation reinforces their dependence on their pack authority figures. It is a self-perpetuating process. Their Omegas emerge from adolescence utterly dependent upon their Tops and suspicious of their own power.

“It is barbarism, and it is ultimately little better than the Progressives who allow their Omegas to wallow in dangerous fever, chanting that chastity is a purification. There are better ways. We cannot allow either of these roads for our children, Dean. It might be a challenge, if we have more than a couple Omegas, to search out a good mentor for each. They will all need different things, I’m sure. Of course, it’s also within the realm of a healthy parental scope to allow for a limited degree of carnal contact between parent and offspring in order to teach, guide, and protect young Omegas. It’s a fine line between parental guidance and inappropriate sexual grooming, but sometimes the paternal parent is the best first choice.”

“Dude! No! We’re not doing that. I don’t care. There are plenty of alternatives here. We don’t live in an isolated village cut off from other people. I’m not screwing my own kid! And neither are you! Jesus Christ!”

“Relax, Dean. I wasn’t suggesting that for us. You’re correct that it won’t be necessary unless we have Omega children who stay on well into adulthood. But from a developmental standpoint, from our position as leaders in the construction of a new society, we owe it to those in perilous circumstances to throw our support into fighting the stigma that the apes saddled us with, the stigma against therapeutic or hierarchical incest. Any Omega who remains a part of his or her birth pack should eventually be Claimed by their pack Alpha, and preferably by every alpha in the pack, if they mean to remain pack members. It’s dangerous to skip that out of a distaste that isn’t instinctive to us. That’s learned societal taboo, Dean; as is our dislike of ushering our own offspring into mature adulthood. It’s a rite of passage in many Ultra-Traditional packs for the Alpha or paternal parent to claim rights of _’Jus Primae Noctis’_ from their Omegas at the dawn of their maturity. And whether we like the practice or not, none of the Omegas who belong to such a pack show up at the hospital in Heat-distress.”

“Whatever, C.J. Doesn’t mean it’s healthy either. Maybe I learned it too well, because the very idea makes my skin crawl.” Dean steered toward home.

“Well, I can’t disagree with you, despite how I appreciate the issue from multiple directions. It would take a significantly altered headspace for me too. I pray that never becomes a necessity.” Cas stacked his papers and slid them into his briefcase. “But I won’t hesitate to act if any of our pups approach the condition that those poor wretches were in last week. Better to suffer being knotted by your father than boil in your own skin and die screaming.”

“It won’t come to that, Cas,” Dean stated unequivocally. “We’re not going to let them face it alone. We’ll have made preparations. They’ll know what to expect, and they won’t be caught flat-footed.”

“No,” Cas agreed grimly. “They won’t.”

“You got a plan of attack figured out?” Dean asked.

“Dean, Max is right. We need to see our Omega and alpha pups properly prepared for their cycles. They’ll need mentors we trust. And they’ll need leave to begin exploring before they reach that critical age of sixteen. Whether we greenlight full penetrative sex or not, we must allow them routes for safe exploration. They need coaches who can help them learn to control their wolves. God, Dean, if we can get this right, get the seeds of Tertiary control planted while they’re still teens, teach them to be citizens as well as sexual and hierarchical wolves, if we can expand those seeds to blanket our whole society, not simply our own pups, so many of the problems we spend so much time chasing our tails against will vanish. Imagine if it became customary to send every fifteen-year-old adolescent into a three month onsite training regimen where they could explore themselves with no boundaries. We could identify dangerous behavior patterns before they coalesce. We could divert and reshape harmful thought patterns. Imagine if we had had an opportunity like this in our youth! Think of the angst we might have avoided. This is our frontier, my love! And we’re finally ready to make real headway! This is so exciting!”

Dean grinned. “God, you’re gorgeous when you’re on a roll like that. Huh, sex camp. I can dig that, babe.”

Cas huffed. Then he sighed, saluting informally toward the guard at the gate outside their home. “Eventually we’ll need to look at an even younger age and address freshly Presented pre-adolescents,” he added. “Most parents don’t have a clue how to support their own pups through the most traumatic growth phase of all. We need to offer them our assistance, and we need to find a way to screen tween pups who are showing signs of distress for any that might turn out to be Dominants. We’ll need screening tools for nine and ten-year-olds whose wolves have emerged pre-Presentation and are bigger and wilder than a child can control. I’m convinced there are many more in the world like Michael than we know. They never get counted because they flame out before they reach Keller testing age. We don’t have the tools yet to identify them. All of our screening tools are sex-based. But there are children out there like Michael and me whose wolves aren’t tameable without assistance.”

Dean maneuvered the car into Cas’ usual parking space and cut the engine.

Cas looked across at him. “I’m convinced those are the ones who don’t survive to adulthood. I can’t prove it yet. But I’m going to.”

“Yes, C.J.,” Dean agreed staunchly. “We’re going to.” Dean studiously ignored the tarp in the corner.

Cas smiled. Dean laid a hand on his arm. “And for what it’s worth, thanks for digging out an Omega figurehead in place of Michael. Promise me you won’t railroad Max into more than he’s up for.”

Castiel’s face dropped into pure innocence. “Scout’s honor, Dean. But I won’t promise not to encourage him to try some things that scare him. He’s capable of far more than he knows. I intend to explore those limits a little bit.”

Dean sighed and nodded.

Cas placed his own hand on top of Dean’s and said, “So now we turn back to the uncomfortable conversation of Kate and her foster alpha. There is an Ozzie living in my home under the auspices of a probational stint as nanny to my children with neither my invitation nor my permission. I’m not about to forget that, Dean. Applying to the state board to foster her while her legal battles are in limbo without first obtaining my nod was a subversive trick.”

Dean chewed on the inside of his cheek briefly. “The state wouldn’t have approved my application without your sanction, sir. I know you signed off on it in the end. She may not have had an invitation, but no one enters the house without your permission. You said yes in the end, at least on the form.”

“I had little choice, Dean, after what you’d promised her!”

“Bullshit,” Dean maintained stubbornly. “No one pushes you into a decision you don’t want to make, especially not one that directly affects your family, especially not one that stems from your disobedient brat. You _live_ to rein me in. You may not like it, and you may be pissed at me for forcing the question the way I did, but if you weren’t on board you would’ve found another arrangement and made _me_ explain it to her. You wouldn’t have brought her home with us. I don’t know what’s going on with you, sir. Did you really just _forget_ that your word is law in this house? First, you let yourself be played into me finagling my way into the hospital on Sunday, and now you can’t stop me from adopting an Ozzie? Cas, what’s going on?”

Cas held his eye for a few beats and then sucked a long breath in through his nose and studied the floormat between his knees. “I thought we were partners, Dean. I’m not opposed to the idea of fostering Kate through her troubles from an ideological perspective. I know the next few years will be difficult for her. But you made that decision for both of us over my objections and well before I was prepared; before we’d had a chance to consider all of the ramifications. It’s not supposed to work this way. We agreed that I would rudder the ship with your input, not the other way around. You didn’t give me a chance to weigh the very justifiable concerns I have. You didn’t even warn me that a state rep would be contacting me for a security check. It was a blindside, Dean, and you know how I feel about those. She may be all kinds of wonderful and still be nowhere near fit to care for our pups. We don’t know her yet. She may be traumatized to a degree that causes irrational or dangerous outbursts. And the last thing she’ll need is to play musical households if this isn’t the best fit for her. Dean, you were reckless and blatantly insubordinate in your actions – so much so that I’m uncertain how to proceed.”

Dean let his head fall back against the headrest, staring straight up at the car’s plush interior. Cas hadn’t really answered the question. “Please don’t kick her out, Sir. What I did…that’s not her fault. And… You wouldn’t have agreed if you really had reservations.” Dean sighed heavily, sounding more like a grunt. He kicked himself internally for his impulsive decision to apply to be the Omega’s foster alpha over Castiel’s head and without his knowledge. But when he did it, he never dreamed it would turn out like this. Wasn’t making kneejerk impulsive decisions Dean’s job? Wasn’t reining him in Castiel’s? Which part of the dance broke down? “…I fucked up bad, Alpha. I get that. I swear I do. I acted out of impulse and desperation and fear. I want to curl right down over the girl and keep anything bad from ever touching her again. That’s … Jesus … I know that’s not how it works, but I needed this win, man. Please, just give her a chance.”

Cas pursed his lips in thought, scrubbed at his eyes, and turned to face his brat. “I have no intention of taking your poor choices out on Kate,” he stated. “I’m not happy about it, but it’s true that none of this is her fault. And for better or worse, she’s here now. What I do intend to do is to consider the issue carefully, from every angle, as I’d meant to from the start. I intend to observe her closely, sit in with her during meetings with the attorneys, have her evaluated by a psychiatrist, and perform a thorough background check. I’m considering taking her case out of her lawyer’s hands and giving it to our team. Our staff has far more experience litigating Mating-bond abuse than that state-appointed lackey does. Dean, I expect you to make good on your commitment to be her foster alpha. You’ll do so without slacking from a professional standpoint, from your responsibility to provide Michael a filling Tertiary experience, from your duty to your pups, to your Packmates, to me as your husband, and to your own self-care.”

“I’m good for it, Sir. I swear.” Dean gulped, registering with relief just how seriously Cas was taking Kate’s predicament.

“And,” Cas said, lifting a finger to let Dean know he’d decidedly not finished yet. “You’ll meet those extra commitments with a very sore bottom and a pair of very blue balls. No sex, Dean. Not for two weeks. Spankings every morning for those same two weeks. I decide the severity. I decide the count. I decide the venue. If you so much as _look_ like you’re about to complain, I will tack on more consequences.”

“Yessir,” Dean mumbled down toward his lap. It had seemed like an elegant plan at the time, but Cas wasn’t hiding his hurt, a pain that was only now beginning to sink into Dean’s psyche. Why were these things never clear to him until after the fact? It appeared that allowing Dean his way wasn’t going to be the victory it had always promised to be. And maybe that was Castiel’s reason for allowing it to proceed as it had done. Would Cas _use_ a traumatized girl to prove a point to his Sub about blindsides?

He would if all parties benefited in the end, wouldn’t he? He totally would. Kate would never need to know that she’d moved in over the Alpha’s objections.

Damnit, Castiel.

They sat in silence. The windshield fogged slightly. Dean knew there was more.

“I’m hurt, Dean,” Cas finally admitted out loud. “I get what drove you. Believe me, I feel the same anguish you do. I’m as desperate to save them, to save them all. But we can’t do it like this, at odds with each other, going behind each other’s back. We can’t afford to whittle away at the trust we’re building. You’re not out of balance. You’re fresh from a Rut; a fall under your belt that took you to your knees and then set you right back on firm ground again. The only thing on your horizon right now is your cycle rebound, and this doesn’t bear any of those hallmarks. You’re not pulling insular, not regressing verbally, and you’re not lashing out irrationally. I have to conclude that we can’t blame your decisions on anything but a desire to have your own way at any cost and a lack of faith that I would address the situation appropriately. And I have to conclude that the cost to you personally needs to be steep or I’ll have lost control of you altogether.”

“It’s not like that, Sir.”

“Dean,” Cas pressed his lips together as he searched for the right words. “I’m being straight with you. I’m aware that, if motivated enough, you are willing to take any consequence I can dream up… if you want something badly enough. I’m not happy with what you did, with how you went about it and how your actions disrespect my position. I don’t enjoy knowing that my authority is negotiable to you. That’s not how I understand our roles. I’m not pleased with you at all. But I had to consider why this was worth it to you when you knew damned well how I would feel in the aftermath. You want to know why I approved your application? Because despite feeling hurt and disrespected, I trust your instincts. If it meant enough to you that you were willing to cause me pain and face my wrath to get it, then I have no alternative but to listen to that impulse. That doesn’t absolve you of deceit, nor of insubordination, and it doesn’t grant you permission to do whatever the hell you want from here on. I am very angry with you.”

“Sir…”

Cas cut him off. “Don’t you dare apologize to me yet.” He glowered for a moment, and then softened his voice, still adamant, but no longer incensed. “So, she stays for now. I make no promises that she stays long term. Furthermore, I have no intention of showing a disunity to our Pack. This discussion is for you and me, alone.”

“You don’t think they’ll notice my bare ass turning their stomachs at breakfast every morning?”

Cas huffed. “I never said I was spanking you at breakfast, Pet. Give me some credit. I’m far more creative than that. Now come on. There’s a birthday dinner waiting, I’m sure.”

“Aw, fuck, I forgot,” Dean groaned. “Do we have to?”

“Absolutely. Move it, Winchester. It’s not every day you turn twenty-nine.”

“Twenty-nine,” Dean grumbled, sliding out of the sleek automobile he despised so much. “One more year before I’m old. I’ll kill them if they used glitter this year.”

“Your thirties don’t begin until you turn thirty-one, my brat. It’s not as dire as all that. And you’ll behave yourself and be a good sport or I’ll have Sam use his paddle for your birthday licks instead of his hand.” Cas wrapped an arm around Dean’s waist and escorted him toward the door.

Dean planted his feet. “Birthday licks? Cas, I’m not twelve! We’re not doing that!”

“We most certainly are,” Cas told him, all warmth evaporating in a way that made Dean shiver. “In fact, now I consider the matter, due to circumstances that were utterly within your control but through which you chose to take the most insubordinate path anyway, I’m tripling the usual tradition. It’s not simply one round of twenty-nine swats. It’ll be three. One for me, one for Michael, and one for your brother who is so very patient with you when he clearly has cause to wring your neck multiple times a week. What’s more, I plan to encourage my cohorts to use their imaginations as to implements and positions. One of these days you’re going to learn when to shut up.”

“Seriously?!”

“Happy birthday, Dean.”

“Damnit.”

Dinner didn’t include any glitter, confetti, or surprises, for which Dean was grateful enough to cheer up and enjoy himself. He unwrapped his gifts from the end of the table, marveling at the creativity and effort his family had gone to, and hugging each packmate tightly, warmly. He had two helpings of cake, a rich, moist almond confection that melted in his mouth, a regional specialty of Tony’s.

Kate sat on one of the stools at the island, near the pups, mute and awkward. The Pack left her her space.

Dean kept mum about the birthday tradition he was hoping Castiel would forget, but the man was a machine when it came to keeping his word, and he herded everyone into the parlor once Tony cleared the dessert dishes away. Even Kate braved the festivities, trailing the others cautiously through the archway with Kat in her arms. She looked wary and uncomfortable, shooting baffled looks toward Sarah, keeping constant tabs on Kali. She was clearly battling an impulse to sneak back to the security of her room. But Kathleen had taken a shine to her from the first introduction, and Kate appeared to be using the pup as an anchor. She obviously felt safer with a baby in her arms.

So did Dean for that matter. “Hand Jimmy to April, Dean,” Cas instructed. “Kate, my dear, do not be alarmed. Birthday spankings such as Dean’s about to experience are for Pack brats only. Please don’t feel concerned. We have no intention of putting you through an ordeal like this, either now or in the future. I apologize for the rude baptism into Winchester Pack life. We’re regretfully not fully tamed.” Castiel’s lightheartedness turned Dean’s stomach queasy. If he was making jokes, he was revving up to something stinging and quite unpleasant.

Castiel turned formally to Michael, squaring up with gravity, making quite the unnecessary production. “Michael, I respectfully request permission to lay hands upon your mate until he’s a blubbering, slobbering mess. Oh, and Sam needs permission too.”

Oh, yeah, the man was in fine fettle.

“Granted,” Michael laughed.

And there went Dean’s last hope that Michael might go easy on him. The traitor.

Cas rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Sam, you’re first. He’s all yours. Any position you like. Your only hard rule is that your total count needs to equal twenty-nine. Preferably – so that we can be sure this birthday really sticks, as it is his penultimate year prior to entering the staid reserve of his thirties – you’ll make him feel it. This tradition is not simply ceremonial. Think of it as recompense for whatever he got away with last year and a good, solid prepayment on this next one.”

“Yes, Sir,” Sam said enthusiastically. “Go ahead and strip, Dean. There’s no point fighting clothes when they’ll only be in the way.”

Dean squashed the mulish impulse to revisit his argument with Cas concerning whether a decade ended at the last occurrence of the tens column in the set or carried on into the first occurrence of the next one – that is, whether it ended at zero or one. Twenty-nine wasn’t the penultimate year of his twenties unless you were a stubborn, pedantic, self-important blowhard to whom being literal took precedence over being realistic. Dean set his jaw. A prescient look from Cas reminded him that both arguments and complaints right now counted against his punishment for the next two weeks, and he kicked off his boots.

“Dah-dee!” Alex pointed, tugging on Sarah’s cardigan to make sure she was watching.

Sarah took a seat with the toddler in her lap, finding herself amused at Dean’s plight rather than mortified, clearly feeding off Castiel’s pleasure. Jess plunked down beside her with Hank.

“Hands on your shins, Dean,” Sam instructed. “Lean all the way over. Don’t lose your balance.”

“You take care of your business, little brother, and let me take care of mine,” Dean shot back. He widened his stance and doubled over, bracing his hands on his shins just below each knee, showing everything to the room and blushing. Cain had J.T. in his arms. He took a spot near the foyer, less invested in torturing the birthday boy than the rest of them. Kate followed Cain with her eyes but kept her distance. She practically blended into the back drapes.

“OW!” Dean hollered as Sam’s hand connected.

“I owe you for so much crap, Dean. Hold still and quit your bitching.” He slapped down again. Then again. As Sam established his rhythm, the Pack counted them out, cheerfully enjoying the alpha’s humiliation. Dean’s ass reddened, and he grimaced as blood rushed to his face. Sam wasn’t playing. The smacking sound bounced from the high ceilings. Fred appeared in the archway to the kitchen with a gracious smile, clearly pleased that his Pack still found time to bond and to celebrate as only wolves do. He stood relaxed while Sam’s powerful smacks turned Dean’s face and backside bright red, a gentle look of pride on his aging face.

When Sam reached twenty-five, he paused, bracing a hand on Dean’s lower back. “Four more, Fred,” he offered. “Would you like to finish my turn?”

“How very generous, beta,” the butler said with a terrifying smile. “Are you certain?”

“Have at him,” Sam agreed, stepping clear. “If we’re clearing air, I know you’ve got a grudge or two you’ve been sitting on.”

Dean glanced up, but he didn’t protest. Sam had a point. If anyone in this house deserved a shot at Dean’s backside, Fred was near the top of that list. It didn’t stop Dean from huffing a hard gasp when Fred’s hand struck the crease of his ass right in the same spot four quick times, whipping down with a particular pop of his wrist that felt more like a strap than a hand.

“Holy…! OW! Fred, that hurts!”

“Happy birthday, alpha,” the butler said with dignity and warm touch to Dean’s back before gliding back to his place in the archway.

Dean stood up, rubbing that spot, his face expressing shock and horror.

“My turn!” Michael shouted.

“Go easy on me, huh?” Dean pleaded, grunting as he took a few painful steps.

“Not on your life, Winchester,” Michael retorted. “You still owe me for promising me a hand in your fall and then giving the whole thing to Castiel. I forgave you, but I could really use some closure. Go stand in the front window. Hold onto the top of the frame. Legs wide. Curtains open.”

Dean sighed heavily, but as before, he obeyed without complaint.

“You know no one’s going to see me, right? There’s no street view from this window.” He took his position, feeling very exposed despite the private lawn and sequestered drive.

“It’s not my intention to give the world a view, alpha,” Michael said. “I just like the aesthetic. You’re beautiful like that, outlined by the security lights. Hold on tight.”

“Yes, Sir,” Dean responded, tightening his grip. He was up on the balls of his feet, but he wasn’t sure if that had been a prod of Michael’s from inside his bond or if he just knew Michael would most appreciate him a little off balance.

And then the first stroke struck, and Dean grunted and closed his eyes. Michael had chosen to use the sole of his own shoe, and on top of Sam’s palm, it hurt like a motherfucker. Michael hit again, shifting lower.

This was no playful ceremonial tradition. Dean would have purple bruises in the morning. Deep bruises before he’d even begun a fortnight of daily spankings would be hell. He gulped, and his breath hitched as the shoe fell, far more literal than he liked.

It made a glorious sound, much to the delight of the Pack. Tears squeezed out of Dean’s eyes. Michael’s pace was slow enough to draw the ordeal out, each smack hitting in a different spot and setting the sting into an intense burn before they’d even reached fifteen. Dean didn’t look down, but he knew Michael had struck the nerve that resonated with his arousal. His cock chubbed playfully.

No matter how accustomed Dean became to embracing his submissive and exhibitionist impulses, it would never stop being an embarrassment. Michael slapped his shoe down hard three times in quick succession, right at the crease of Dean’s ass, and he popped up onto his toes.

“Jesus Christ! Michael!” Dean whined. He opened his eyes, gasping, and was horrified to see a security cart had stopped right in front of the window. The four guards in the cart were enjoying the show immensely.

“Ahh!” Dean cried out in surprise and mortification. They were laughing, pointing, grabbing at their own crotches, elbowing each other as they spilled out of the cart to get closer. One of them pulled his dick out of his pants and began stroking himself right in front of Dean to the obvious amusement of the others.

“Cas!” Dean called over his shoulder.

“Yes, I’m aware, Pet. I texted the guardhouse and let them know that there was a show to watch if any of the guards not currently on duty were interested. Don’t worry, the pups are all in places they can’t see the observers. Enjoy yourself, Pet. They think you’re hot.”

“Son of a bitch!” Dean exclaimed as Michael’s shoe struck him hard again.

“Twenty-four!” shouted the Pack.

“Lean into the window, Dean,” Michael instructed. “Last five. Put your chest to the glass and don’t close your eyes. Stick your ass out.”

Dean panted as he placed himself. His cock had fully joined the party, to his horror. He was showing out whether he wanted to or not. He heard Michael shuffle his feet, seeking the optimal position. Dean tightened up. This was going to hurt.

Fucking birthdays, man. Who needs this shit?

The man before him outside in the cold stroked himself rapidly, making obscene gestures with his tongue while the others cheered him on.

And then Dean’s ass lit up in a fiery blaze that turned his fingers and his toes white. He howled. Dribbles of precome smeared the window. He could hear the idiots outside hooting and cheering in moronic entertainment. Dean caught his breath and eased his eyes open in time to see the security guard blow his load spectacularly.

“Get off my lawn!” Dean shouted at them through the window. He pounded on the glass with his palm with what he hoped was a forbidding expression, but they turned back to their cart still laughing.

“Dean, be polite,” Cas chastised.

“Apes, Cas! You let apes beat off in front of me while I’m buck naked and getting my ass whipped!” Dean turned around and confronted his Alpha with a furious scowl. Cas raised his brows calmly, as if to say, ‘Yes. And?’

“Fucking birthdays!” Dean hollered in impotent rage. Portia flinched and ducked behind Castiel’s legs.

“One more, Dean,” Cas told him smugly. “You’re nearly done. I want you over the back of the sofa, and I want you holding your cheeks wide. Ladies, I invite you to stay put if you like, but you may get drooled on if you remain, and you won’t have the best view.”

Jess and Sarah both sprang up and giggled their way to the other side of the couch, enjoying themselves immensely.

“Papa! ‘Pank!” Alex cried, wriggling out of Sarah’s arms and pointing at Dean.

“That’s a new word, Ace,” Michael crooned, sweeping Alex up and hugging him in congratulations. “Good boy! Dean, Alex said a new word!”

“Goody for Alex,” Dean groused quietly. He shook his arms out, cracked his neck once or twice, shuddered blood flow back through his legs with a hearty shake to each as he took his place over the back of the couch.

“You’re a sick man, Alpha,” he told Cas once he was in place with his ass cheeks held wide.

“Indeed, this is true. Move your fingertips outward a bit, Pet. I need access to as much of your bottom as you can give me. Are you ready?”

“Bring it.”

Cas hadn’t shown Dean what he held in his hand, but Dean knew it from the first stroke. It was a slapper – leather covering a narrow, hard plastic strip a little less than a foot long. Cas went to work, applying stinging swats across the insides of Dean’s thighs, onto the delicate undercurve, all over his sit spots, and on every third hit, upright, straight to his hole.

Dean could feel his flesh swell and heat. He was sensitive there, far more sensitive that the skin of his butt, far more sensitive even than his precious and protected sit spots, and Dean writhed up onto his toes. He couldn’t hold still as the burn intensified. He flexed his knees and then pushed them straight. He rolled his ass to the side. Cas should have corrected his Sub, but instead, he simply followed, proving that Dean had nowhere to hide that Cas couldn’t get to him.

Dean was wheezing as the count mounted. His face went bright red. His cock throbbed. He wanted to come, and had he permission, he would’ve doused the back of the couch like a fire hose. But he knew better than to allow that without express authorization, no matter whose birthday it was. It took all of his concentration to hold back.

Cas delivered a particularly stingy smack to Dean’s asshole on the count of twenty-nine, and then he stepped back and admired his painting. Bruises were beginning to develop deep in the tissue of Dean’s backside from Michael’s shoe, and gradations of pink and red radiated outward in an abstract pattern that Cas thought might look striking in a frame above his mantle. Dean shoved himself upright, looked around, and then shuffled to where his clothes sat folded. He limped and grimaced.

“You lot suck, you know that? All of you. Fuck you all.”

“Now Dean, is that any way to speak to your family?” Cas admonished.

“Sir, permission to go jerk off in private?” Dean asked as he pulled his shirt on.

“Denied,” Michael and Cas both stated in stereo in the exact same cold tone.

“Well then, would one of you please help me out with this?” Dean gestured to his crotch.

“Dean, chastity should not be a new concept to you. Are you confused? Do you have a complaint to lodge?” Cas asked with an indifferent air.

Dean caught sight of Kate watching mutely from the door at the back out to the pool, her eyes giving nothing away, and he looked down, digging bare toes into the expensive rug. “No, Sir,” he decided. “No complaints.”

“Perhaps you’d like to thank your family for the dinner and gifts. It’s not every day a member of our Pack turns twenty-nine.” Cas spoke in a way that only an intimate would catch the razor-sharp warning, but to Dean, it was obvious. Just as his birthday spankings had been no simple, playful tradition, this moment was no trifle to Castiel.

Hierarchies do not maintain themselves.

And Dean had upset that balance badly.

Payback would be no piece of cake. The security guards were only the beginning of Castiel’s _’Treatise on Why Blindsides are Unacceptable’._

Dean stood rocking in place for a bit, wearing only his boxer briefs and his undershirt, staring at the ground and digging for his headspace. He owed this to Cas. He knew he did.

He looked up, fixing a deliberate twinkle into his eye and a smart-alecky smirk across his mouth. “Thanks, guys. You’re still assholes, but there’s no one I’d rather get my butt roasted in front of than you dicks.”

“Happy birthday, my Pet. Go on to bed,” Cas instructed. “We’ll take care of everything tonight. Do not touch your penis, either directly or indirectly.”

“Dah-dee!” Alex called, breaking free from Michael and hurrying over to demand Dean pick him up. Dean chuckled, lifting the boy into his arms. Alex leaned around and attempted to peek inside his drawers, trying to look at his backside. “Dah-dee, Papa ‘pank?”

“Yep, kiddo, he sure did. Hey, sit up, Ace. Leave Daddy’s butt alone.”

“Owie?”

“Very.” Dean righted his son in his arms and carried him toward the foyer. “Papa told Daddy to go to bed, champ, so unless you’re ready to hit the hay with me, you need to go see Papa.” Dean tipped the boy into Castiel’s waiting arms. “Give Daddy a kiss,” he requested, leaning down for a sloppy toddler version and ruffling Alex’s dark hair. “I’m all right, Ace. Papa spanks when he needs to because he loves us.”

“Owie,” Alex explained to Cas as Dean slipped into the foyer with a limp, clutching the rest of his clothes. His hand meandered back and rubbed at the harshest burn between his cheeks.

“And don’t rub it!” Castiel called blindly from the other room.

Dean jumped, snapping his hand back to his front and stepping faster up the stairs.

He had two long, miserable weeks in front of him, but they bought him something tangible this time, something wonderful, something real. Kate was going to be a blessing in this house, Dean could feel it, and he wasn’t sorry. Cas would have waffled over worrying about risks and ramifications until the Omega was lost somewhere within a system that raped Omegas as callously as her Pack Alpha had done. Someone had to move fast, decide now, wrap her up tight and get her the fuck out of there, and if Cas wasn’t going to do it, then Dean would take a page out of April’s playbook: Act first. Do it boldly. Do it without remorse. And then pay for it.

Dean chanted that mantrum to himself as he headed toward the master bedroom, trying like hell to drown out his guilt at having disappointed his Top, his Alpha, his Dominant, his husband, his everything.

It was worth it, he chanted.

Two weeks was nothing.

When compared with the lifetime of misery Kate had been staring down, two weeks was a trifle.

_’Bring it’_, thought Dean with a hot slap to his own aching ass in punctuation. It wasn’t the brat’s fault he got away with it, he chanted. Brats do what brats do.

It’s up to their Tops to set the limits.

Right?

Dean wrestled a smug mask on over the penitence that stubbornly held its ground. It wasn’t his fault he got away with it, any of it. If Cas couldn’t keep up, that was the Alpha’s problem, not the brat’s, damnit.

He couldn’t silence the voice in his head that predicted the next two weeks might prove instructive on whether or not Dean had actually gotten away with anything. He turned the tap on in his shower, aborted an impulse to rub the sting out of his asshole, and eased his underwear off without dragging the elastic down the length of his dick.

Dean awoke to fingers in his hair and warm lips on his shoulder. He squinted toward his bedside clock, surprised to realize it was only ten-thirty. He rolled back into Castiel’s warm body. “Just us?” he mumbled sleepily.

“Mm-hm,” Cas answered with his lips still roving across Dean’s body.

“D’ju have fun tonight at my expense?” Dean questioned.

Cas took a moment. He pushed up to a sitting position and clicked his lamp on. “Dean, can we talk for a moment?”

“You’re the boss, C.J.” Dean abandoned an effort to sit beside him, opting to lay on his side facing the man instead. Castiel’s half-smile spoke more resignation than anything else, and Dean changed direction. “I mean, sure, man. I’m up. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I owe you an explanation,” Cas confessed. “I haven’t been supporting you well lately, and I’m worried you may read that as an instability in my commitment to you as your Dominant. Dean, love, that’s not the case. It’s really not about you at all. It’s about me. Me and Gabriel.”

“What’s Gabe got to do with anything?” Dean wondered, shoving up onto an elbow.

Cas sighed. “I can’t explain why, but I had an awful premonition about his cycle this time. Maybe it was something to do with my own instincts clueing into the Septennial and turning up my anxiety. I don’t know. He was late with his Heat, and even though I knew the explanation, I couldn’t stop worrying about him. I was convinced that he was headed right back into another dangerous round.”

“Okay. You were on edge. I get that. Gabe’s Heats throw wide often enough that that’s not an unfounded fear. You did everything you could to make sure you were available for him.”

“And then I was called out,” Cas continued, taking up where Dean left off. “And I confess, my mind went blank on me. I needed him with me. I needed to be where he was, but I couldn’t drag him to the hospital. I panicked. I grabbed the closest approximation to my brother I could get, and I dragged him along to ease my nerves.”

“Michael,” Dean concluded. Cas nodded.

“I couldn’t take April.”

“And you tried to plug me in in your stead here, hoping I’d watch over Gabe as well as you would’ve,” Dean guessed.

Cas nodded again. “In retrospect, insisting that you carry out your chastity punishment in the face of a Heat-glut was ridiculous. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Dean, I’m sorry. I dropped the ball.”

“I thought you were playing sophisticated games with me, man. I had just about concluded that you’re so advanced in your play that you were eighteen moves ahead of me.” Dean chuckled to himself. “Shows just how much of a bluff you’ve got on me. Even when you fuck up, I’m still lost on you. How’d I end up in the car then, if you wanted me at home?”

“Conflicting instincts,” Cas admitted dully, staring straight ahead.

“A Tertiary mutiny?” Dean asked.

“Secondary,” Cas corrected. “My Secondary was all in a tizzy, and he wanted the whole Pack up under his wing.” Cas sighed again. “My apologies, Dean. Losing focus like that… it destabilizes you. I can’t allow myself that kind of mistake, when you and April both depend on me. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have postponed your punishment immediately and tapped you in where you were needed. But I both wanted you with me and wanted you with Gabriel, and those competing impulses drove me to freeze up completely. I feel terrible, Dean. By the time I realized how badly I’d fucked up, it was too late to apply any damage control. I know you’ve been puzzling over it for days now. I needed to explain and to assure you that I’m not faltering in a wider degree. I’ve still got you, love. I beg your forbearance. I will make it up to you.”

Dean snorted. “Why do I suspect making it up to me is going to hurt?”

“Please don’t brush this off, Dean. I screwed up.”

“It’s okay, man. We all screw up sometimes. No harm done.”

“Are you sure?” Cas frowned. “Your blindside with Kate struck me as a volume increase; a test to check whether I’d lost my touch entirely or merely had a momentary glitch.”

“Nah, Cas. The two things weren’t related. At least, I don’t think they were. Look, I was confused for a bit, cause getting away with shit _never_ happens to me, not like that, not that easy. I thought you were playing a long game. Can we move on without the tears and pleading? Please? It makes my ass twitch just hearing you beg.”

Cas chuckled. “I’m not begging, you dick. I’m honestly apologizing to you for letting you flounder.”

“So,” Dean thought out loud. “If I was floundering, then it’s probly not my fault that I slipped Kate in under your nose after all. That would be your fault too. ‘Cause I was just reacting to having the rug pulled out from under me. Yeah. That’s it, isn’t it? I reached out for you, and fell flat on my face when you didn’t meet your side of the routine, and then, because I’m a Sub who needs to know his Top is on his game, I tried again, even bigger, and fell flat on my face again. None of this is my fault. I shouldn’t be in punishment at all!”

“Dean…”

“And that means you owe me big-time for letting apes ogle my delectable body without my consent!”

“Are you finished?” Cas asked flatly. Dean glanced up at him, snickering softly.

“Am I still in chastity?” Dean posed hopefully.

“You absolutely are,” Cas told him. “And I may decide that this counts as argumentative behavior.”

Dean snorted again, laughing outright. “No, sir,” he added promptly. “No argument from me. I was just following through your apology to its logical conclusion. You can’t fault me for that. You introduced the idea.”

Cas smiled softly and slid down to stretch out beside Dean. “You’re such a brat.” He wrapped an arm beneath Dean’s shoulder and turned him to make Dean his little spoon. Dean pressed back into him.

“You love me,” Dean added.

“And you love me,” Cas replied with a kiss to Dean’s scent gland, right behind his ear.

Castiel roused him at four a.m., before going on his daily run through freezing dark streets. Dean barely stifled his grumbles in time. He stumbled upright, eyes bleary, ass aching, and he tried hard not to snap at his husband’s chipper mood.

Cas spent more time appreciating the colors of Dean’s backside than he did applying a simple OTK. The Alpha spanked Dean’s thighs instead of his ass, and it hurt like blazes, but it ended quickly, leaving Dean anticipating a long slow build over the next two weeks.

Because Cas was nothing if not creative.

“You’re with me for breakfast, Pet,” he whispered as he tucked his husband back into bed. “I expect your best behavior. Kate is Ozzie, and she needs a good example set by a seasoned Submissive.”

“Yessir,” Dean mumbled, enjoying the loving strokes down his back.

“And Dean,” Cas said softly in a far more intimate tone. “You smell like a hormone flush. Your rebound is upon us. Let’s please be diligent about seeing that through. I’d like for you to work through it with Michael. There is time after breakfast for a short scene. Remember though, no sex, at least none for you as a recipient. I will allow you to provide him oral care if that’s what Michael wants. Behave for him, Pet. This is no time for a brat insurgency. Do I make myself clear?”

“Mmmm, yessir,” Dean mumbled again, sliding an arm beneath his pillow and rolling from his side onto his belly, quickly losing the thread of any brat insurgency plans. He was out before Cas padded out of the room in socks on his way out for an early run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love to all. Stay safe. Stay well.


	12. Monday, January 28, 2019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel takes his message out of the house. Balthazar adores his job. Michael and April both have bones to pick, but all that goes out the window when something totally unexpected happens that promises to change how the world views Omegas forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greeting, Pack. I hope everyone's still safe. I hope that where restrictions are being lifted that we all keep in mind that viruses don't care what the law allows. Love you guys.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter. It's a game changer for our Winchesters. It's also a bit of a gamble on my part. It works in my head. But there's only one way to find out if it works on the page.
> 
> No collage this round. Nothing jumped out at me as suitable.

If he’d been asked to guess how Castiel’s creativity would lean as their work week started up, Dean would have said there would be a firm statement made that clicked more than one box for the Alpha and his Pack, and he wasn’t wrong. Dean’s backside ached. Some of the bruising was already leaking down into the backs of his thighs, fluids pulled by gravity to paint a grim picture. But where Dean was thinking family Pack, Castiel widened his scope to his Facility Pack. They left home Monday morning without a word said about spankings. Dean drove Castiel’s Lexus with his nerves jangling. He shot worried glances across to his husband, but Cas had his head buried in papers already and a frown of concentration speaking to his mind’s engagement in matters far more substantial than whose ass needed swats.

At the turnstile though, Cas stowed his papers in an almost distracted way. He waited for Dean to emerge from his kiosk and then calmly took Dean’s satchel from him. He set the bag on the floor by the security desk and nocked his head wordlessly toward the desk itself. Dean frowned. Cas wasn’t even looking at him. Around them, the small anteroom bustled with morning activity. Wolves moved in and out of kiosks on rote. The stream of employees made a constant one-way flow that swirled around the two men like rocks in the creek. Most of them greeted the alphas as they passed, respectful and warm.

Castiel nodded politely to them in response, but Dean simply frowned. “What’s up?” he asked, confused.

“Right here,” Castiel replied.

“Here?” Dean questioned in surprise. 

“Hands on the desk,” Cas told him simply. He greeted Mark, the security guard, and handed both his bag and Dean’s in through the window for Mark to hold. “Step quick, Pet. We’ve got a lot to do today.”

Dean looked around, but he didn’t have any excuses for delay, so biting his lip, he faced Mark through the window and dropped his slacks. Having the guard witness from in front of him struck Dean as especially embarrassing. Mark would be derelict in his duties if he stepped away, and though he was focused past Dean on the flow of people in the room at large, he stood not three feet from Dean’s blushing face.

“Ass out, Dean. You know the position.”

Dean corrected his posture with a “Sir.” Behind him employees noted the state of his backside, and they made a bit of a stir before Castiel set them all back to moving as they were.

Castiel’s hand was warm and a little calloused as he ran it lightly over Dean’s ass. Chill bumps followed the caress. Dean tucked his face into his hands.

“Head up, Submissive,” Castiel told him with a smack to his backside. Dean gritted his teeth and lifted up again, looking right through the security guard, pretending for all he was worth that Mark wasn’t there.

“Why are you being punished this morning?” Castiel prompted, spanking him four times, hot and fast.

Dean hissed. “For insubordination, Sir,” he gritted out.

Castiel agreed, spanking him painfully six or seven times. “What do you have to say for yourself?” Employees continued through the foyer entrance. The turnstile gate barely stopped turning before another wolf pressed through.

“I screwed up, Sir. I was disrespectful. I know better. I’m not in charge. I’m sorr…”

“NO!” Cas cut him off. “No apologies! Not yet.” Dean gasped as his husband’s hand set his ass on fire, waking the deep ache, starting a throb and a sting that made Dean want to dance in place to alleviate the burn.

“Sir, please! Let me say it. I need to say it! OW!”

“Not until I’m certain you mean it,” Cas told him coldly. Dean winced, grunting, fighting the urge to tuck under or dodge. In the window before him, he saw Billie’s reflection. She stood with brows up in interest, watching for a moment before nodding firmly and continuing in. Jo came through, entered and then exited the kiosk. She smirked with a standard, “Jesus, Winchester, it’s not even eight o’clock yet,” before pushing through the turnstile. Dean’s face reddened. Castiel’s hand was relentless, paying no heed to the bruises already decorating his ass.

When the strokes paused, Dean released the breath he’d been holding. He gripped the desk with his fingers, sweaty as they held on tight. He inadvertently met Mark’s eyes for a moment, and both men swiftly looked away again – Dean dropping his gaze to the marbled desktop and Mark setting himself back to scanning the antechamber.

“Good morning, Sam,” Castiel called warmly, stopping Dean’s brother on his way into a kiosk. “Would you lend me your paddle?”

“Of course, Sir,” Sam replied at once. Dean scowled at his brother’s reflection.

“Up on your toes, Submissive,” Cas instructed. “Fingertips and toes. Stand up tall. Widen your feet for me.”

Dean adjusted with a grunt, steeling himself in the precarious position. The paddle connected with a _pop_. He stifled a cry, reducing the sound to a muted grunt through his teeth. His legs wobbled a little. His toes struggled to hold. Another blow clenched his eyes closed. The next one forced a grimace as his fingertips slipped on the desktop. He let his mouth fall open as he panted through the pain. Cas seemed to be attempting to marry his morning workout with doling out hot hard swats, and Dean whimpered.

His eyes watered. His chest heaved. He trembled. Warm flat wooden strokes fell endlessly until Dean lost track of his surroundings, focused on nothing but the heat and the relentless strikes. He huffed shallowly, shifting his weight to maintain his balance on his toes as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

The rhythm slowed without notice, drawing to a simple unremarkable close without Castiel’s usual flurry of intense swats that marked a finale of sorts. He simply slowed his pace and then stopped altogether with a loud, deep breath.

“That’s it for this morning, alpha,” Castiel said behind him. He returned Sam’s paddle with a word of thanks, collected his briefcase from Mark, squeezed the back of Dean’s neck, and then disappeared through the turnstile without looking back.

Sam waited on his brother, helping stabilize him when Dean pushed shakily off the desk. 

“What was that all about?” Sam asked as Dean eased his pants back up. 

Dean grunted, catching himself before he rubbed the sting out. “Just the usual,” he deferred casually, avoiding his brother’s eyes. “It’s no big deal.” Mark handed Dean his satchel, studiously not looking the alpha in the eyes either.

“No big deal? Dean, your ass is dark purple. Have you seen what it looks like this morning? And after what Cas just did, it’s going to be even worse this afternoon. What the hell did you do? If Missouri sees that she’s going to open another investigation.” Sam followed Dean in through the rotating gate, barraging his brother with concerns.

“What I did is none of your business,” Dean quipped. “It’s between Cas and me.”

“If it was between you and your husband, he had no business displaying you like that for the whole company to ogle,” Sam countered logically. “Come on, man. This is me. Talk to me. I’m your brother.”

Dean stopped at his office door, digging his key out of his pocket and letting himself in. He held the door for his brother, aware that Sam wasn’t going to leave without at least a partial answer. “Look, he told me not to discuss it with everyone. It’s a private matter. Suffice it to say, I was an insubordinate brat, and I deserve every swat, no matter who’s watching. Don’t worry about Missouri, Sam. Cas already talked it over with her. He’s got me set to check in with the clinic every day for the next couple of weeks for a checkup. No one’s going too far.”

“Two weeks,” Sam deadpanned. “Every day?”

“Every morning,” Dean admitted. “I told you. I did this to myself. I deserve it.” He set his satchel on his desk and dug out his flash drive and a protein shake. He grimaced in pain as he eased into his chair.

“This is about Kate, isn’t it?” Sam guessed. “You told Jess that Cas approved your application. She wouldn’t have helped you file it if she knew Alpha wasn’t a part of the decision.”

“I’m not gonna discuss it with you, Sammy. Thanks for checking on me, but I’m fine, man. If that changes, I’ll let you know.

Sam didn’t relax or move to leave for his own duties. He sat down across the desk from his brother and scooted his chair closer, leaning across the surface. “You shouldn’t be punished for helping people, Dean. Discipline is there to stabilize you, not to control you. You know that, right? Does Michael know about this?”

Dean set a hand on his brother’s forearm, patting him lightly. “I’m not being controlled, Sam. Look at me, man. Really look. Listen to me. I’m all right. Swear to god. It’s not fucked up. It’s discipline. It’s not fun, maybe, and I may look like a Titian painting from behind, but Cas knows what he’s doing.”

Whatever Sam saw in Dean’s expression apparently soothed him enough for the moment. He nodded grimly. “Text me when your checkup with Missouri is. I want to be there. I want to hear what she says. Not just today. Every day. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Dean replied with gravity.

“I’m not kidding, Dean.”

“Would you get out of here?” Dean shot back. “You have a class to teach. All that moaning about having your Spanking class taken away from you and the day you get it back, you’re in here stalling. Go on, man. Teach apes to turn asses purple! You want me to model for you?”

“That class isn’t until this afternoon, jerk. And no thanks. Your swollen ass will send every one of them running for the hills.”

“Well, go prepare for it, then,” Dean said dismissively, done with the topic. “Get out of my office. Some of us have work to do this morning.”

“I’m going,” Sam said, rolling his eyes. “You want coffee? I gotta swing back this way in a bit. I can bring you a cup.”

Dean nodded with a thumb’s up as he booted his computer up. “Don’t think you’re going to stop by sixteen times a day to make sure I haven’t swooned from the pain,” he warned.

Sam scoffed. “Fine, asshole. Get your own coffee!” And with a laugh, he wrenched Dean’s door open.

“Sammy?” Dean called. “Thanks, man.”

**************

Balthazar sprayed an enticing cologne onto his chest, skimmed through the scene call sheet once more, checked himself in the mirror, and slipped unceremoniously into his contract space. A nervous beta teenager sat stiffly on the bed in a bathrobe. The kid popped to his feet when the door closed behind the confident Omega. Balthazar sized him up, scenting the room. The kid’s eyes took him in, all bare skin and tight briefs, nothing subtle or demure whatsoever. But a brief glance at the contractor’s face was all he managed before his eyes hit the floor.

Submissive, this one. Undoubtedly. Although some teens carried a lingering vestigial carryover submission from their childhood years, carryover didn’t explain a sub reaction this prominent. Plus, as an Omega, Balthazar shouldn’t be eliciting a Sub reaction at all from any but Profound Subs. He smirked. More and more betas were choosing to contract with Omegas to lose their virginity. Balthazar still hadn’t had an alpha sign up for that, but he wouldn’t be shocked when it finally happened. Omegas weren’t intimidating in size or carriage, and that gave Balthazar a leg up on being the perfect choice for a less terrifying first experience. That was not a fact he took lightly. Most of his virgins were still Omegas themselves, but the rising number of betas on his bed was a hopeful trend.

Balthazar approached but paused before he was in touching distance. “If you can’t even look at me, honey, this is going to awkward as hell. I like to see the color of eyes I’m working with. You’re not scared, are you? I’m just an Omega. Nothing to worry about from me. I’m going to take excellent care of you. What’s your name?”

Cautiously, the beta looked up, already blushing. “Jake, sir. My name’s Jake.”

“Sir?” Balthazar laughed. “You have the nicest manners, sugar. Can I sit with you?” He took a spot next to the kid without waiting for an invitation and he set a calming hand on Jake’s thigh, squeezing gently and rubbing up and down. “Let me share a secret with you, Jake.” Balthazar leaned close enough that his breath would tickle the boy’s ear when he whispered. “You don’t have to ‘Sir’ me.”

Jake giggled and blushed. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“S’not a problem. We’ll figure it out. You wanna start by telling me what you like?” Balthazar moved his hand up the boy’s thigh, watching to see if he would melt or stiffen. He did neither really, but his eyes tracked the progress, and he didn’t flinch when his bathrobe slipped open. He flicked his gaze to Balthazar’s chest, rapt.

“I don’t really know,” Jake admitted.

“Ooh, that’s a treat, then. You and I can find out together, Jake. You know, virgins are my favorite assignments. I hope you don’t mind. There’s something very sexy about watching someone feel it for themselves for the first time. You mind if I take your robe? We’re not going to need it.”

Jake nodded, letting Balthazar untie the knot and push it off the beta’s shoulders. He had on a simple jock strap, blue mesh, that hid his dick. He was half hard and breathing deeply already. “Jake, I really want to touch you. May I, love? Can I put my hands on your body? You have the sexiest tummy. I might have to lick it later.”

Mute, the kid nodded, watching intently as Balthazar straddled his lap and pressed his hands against the boy’s belly, groaning wantonly. Jake’s eyes dilated. His cock twitched.

“Good boy,” Balthazar praised. “Oh, yeah, we’re going to have a good time.” He kept his touch clear of Jake’s cock as he pressed forward and nuzzled his throat. Jake raised his chin, but Balthazar didn’t respond as a Dominant would. That wasn’t his to take. And it wasn’t why Jake was here.

The kid had his Keller test scheduled in a week. Still a virgin at seventeen, he feared entering that experience without any clue what to expect. He’d been advised that a round or two with Balthazar would calm his nerves and offer him a glimpse into himself that might help him behave authentically for his test, rather than leading with his nerves simply because it was all so new.

“You’re beautiful, Jake,” Balthazar crooned, pressing him to lie back. “Your body is ready to show you what it wants. You ready to find out?”

“Uh…yeah…please,” he huffed breathlessly, leaving his hands out on the bed to either side. Balthazar slid up to straddle his belly. He leaned down and collected the kid’s hands and helped him explore the miles of bare skin of the Omega’s body, granting him implicit permission to touch. Jake caught on fast. He trailed his hands down Balthazar’s legs, up the insides of his thighs, daring to cup the meager balls inside his underwear, and watching in awe as Balthazar’s cock stiffened inside the fabric. A dark, damp spot appeared where the head of Bal’s cock leaked against the stretchy cotton.

“What do you think, sweetheart,” Bal asked, leaning close to kiss his lips. “Wanna lay bets on you being a Bottom or a Top? What do you dream about all night long? You wanna fuck me?” Balthazar moved his hand down between them, earning a hitched breath and an unintentional thrust from his virgin.

“That’s it,” Balthazar told him. “Let it come naturally, sugar. Don’t hold back. It’s just you and me and whatever feels good.”

“Would you…? I think I want you to fuck me,” Jake admitted.

“Oh, kid, I was hoping you would say that. You know what? We have all the time in the world. I’m going to make you feel so good, you’re going to twitch all the way home and jerk yourself in the car before you even get inside. How does that sound?”

“Mm-hm,” Jake murmured. 

“Lay back for me, honey. Lay on your back, how ‘bout. Shimmy up onto the bed and let me do all the work. I’m going to show you why I love my job.”

Jake looked behind him and worked his way up onto the bed proper, with his head at the headboard and his feet straight out toward the foot. Balthazar ostentatiously licked his lips and followed. He shoved the beta’s legs apart, giving himself room to work. He held Jake’s eyes as he lowered his royal blue briefs and gracefully worked them off his legs. They disappeared over his head. Balthazar could feel the boy wanting to lower his gaze to take in the whole package, but as Balthazar stared intently, cataloguing all the colors in the young man’s irises, the kid found himself incapable of tearing his eyes away.

Definitely submissive. Not just submissive, but Submissive. And beautiful in his youthful enthusiasm. Jake’s cock pressed hard against the fabric constraining it. He sported quite the package for a young man not yet fully grown. Betas sometimes continued growing well into their twenties. This kid would be _hung_ one day, and Balthazar secretly prayed he would get to play switch this morning. They had a full hour. Virgins always got a whole hour and the first appointment of the day to ensure a contractor who could give them everything. Balthazar’s channel responded, always a good sign.

“I’m going to work you open, Jake.” Balthazar kneed closer, up between Jake’s legs. He reached across and collected a thick towel from the side table. “Lift up, baby. Sometimes I drool a little.” He nudged Jake into lifting his hips and he slid the folded towel beneath his ass, casting semi-intentional grazing touches to his sensitive flesh as he worked, scenting for a reaction as he went. Then, lowering his body to lay out flat, he held Jake’s eyes for a moment then pushed each thigh high into the air and touched the skin behind his balls with his tongue. Bal traced a tentative line downward until he circled the boy’s hole. He listened and he scented, and he purred in pleasure when the young man melted into the touch. Bal pressed in, breeching his hole with his pointed tongue just a little before circling it again.

Jake moaned.

Balthazar looked up, glancing in the mirrored wall at the head of the bed. He found the beta’s toes curled tightly. Another very good sign.

“That’s it, sugar,” he coaxed. “Just relax. I got you. Tell me if I do anything you don’t like. This is for you, baby. All for you.”

“Please…” Jake begged. He aborted a motion to touch Balthazar’s hair.

“You ever had anything in here before, honey?” Bal asked before circling again in a tease.

“Nuh-unh,” Jake whispered, watching intently.

“Oh, love, you are missing out. I’m going to show you a secret spot. But you have to be patient for me. Yeah? I’m going to blow your mind, kiddo.”

“Please!”

“You want to push my face down and make me lick you wide open? Then do it, baby. I’m all yours, and I love rimming almost as much as I love sucking cock. Touch me, Jake. Do it.”

Jake’s hand twitched nervously, but he carded his fingers into Balthazar’s hair, giving the strands a hesitant tug. After a moment, he came to a decision, flattening his palms around Balthazar’s skull and pressing him decisively down between his legs, eliciting a debauched moan from the contractor.

Balthazar set to work on his hole, abandoning the teases. He left long, sloppy licks with the flat of his tongue and quick jabs that breeched ever deeper into the void behind tight muscles. Jake wrapped his legs around Balthazar’s shoulders, swearing a litany of curse words into the headboard as he craned his head as far back as it would go.

Balthazar kind of forgot he was working for a while, pressing himself up with a foot braced on the bed beside his opposite knee. He wanted to dive in headfirst and see just how deep he could go into the boy. Jake wallowed in it, rolling in ecstasy at the unfamiliar pleasure that he’d never imagined would feel like _this_. Balthazar added fingers and thumbs as he worked. No big deal. No production. Nothing in his actions that might spook the kid. This initial process, the deep presses into his body, stretching his rim and coaxing the muscles to relax, it wasn’t about achieving a penetrable orifice. It was about soothing the virgin into trusting the pleasure of his touch. It was about making him crave an even deeper reach, always short of just a little bit deeper. Balthazar watched the kid begin to rock his hips, trying to urge his tongue, his fingers just a bit further in.

He was so beautiful. Jake’s dark skin glowed with a sheen of sweat. He threw his arm across his face and rocked wantonly on Balthazar’s hand. Bal lifted up onto his knees and shoved four fingers into the boy, slick with spit. 

Balthazar loved his job. Where else would he get to be a part of a moment so pure, so earthshattering?

“Would you look at that?” he purred. “You’re a natural, Jake. You light up inside. All I had to do was flip your switch, and you came alive for me. You’re amazing, sweetheart. Here. Let’s try this one more thing before we get to the real show. You ready. Look at me, dear. Eyes on me.” Balthazar eased his fingers out, replacing the four with just his middle finger, pressing in deep as he held the amber-eyed boy’s gaze. With a crook of his finger, Balthazar rubbed a firm touch along the little knot of firm flesh inside him, watching in awe as his eyes shot wide, his feet pressed into the bed, lifting his hips high into the air, and he sucked in a harsh guttural breath. His fists gripped the sheet beneath him and then he bit his lip and closed his eyes.

“Feels good?”

“Fuuuuuck, please do that again…please…” Jake cried.

“Mmm,” Bal agreed, giving him what he wanted. An all too short moment later, Balthazar withdrew his finger and left Jake panting as his hips hit the bed.

Hovering above him on his arms, Balthazar looked into his sweaty face. “You’re doing so well, Jake. You ready for the main event?”

Jake nodded with certainty.

Balthazar chuckled at his enthusiasm. “It’s your day, my sweet. How do you want me?”

“I dunno. Just…regular…I guess?”

Ah, the sweetness of a natural Sub. Jake blinked innocently up at him, trusting fully and so worried he was going to say something wrong, do something wrong. Balthazar nodded without judgment. “See that little foil packet there on the table? Rip it open and hand me the condom inside. We play safely, right, Jake? Repeat after me, kiddo. ‘No glove, no love’. Don’t ever have unprotected sex until you’re committed and fluid-bonded and your pregnancy decisions have been managed. This is no joke. Promise me.”

Jake obeyed without hesitation, repeating the mantrum and ripping into the packet with his teeth. Balthazar rolled the condom on himself and then let Jake squirt lube onto his palm. He spread his knees wide, scootching up close to press Jake’s legs wide around his thighs.

“Take hold of me, Jake,” he instructed. “We’re going to do this together. I’ll aim, all right? You control how deep. You set the pace, love.”

“I.. dunno what I’m doing,” Jake whined, looking down between them where Balthazar had wrapped Jake’s hand around his cock and was helping him stroke. “Can’t you do it? Please…”

“There’s no wrong way to do this, sugar,” Balthazar soothed. “I want you to own this moment.” Balthazar squeezed Jake’s hand around Bal’s cock and held his eyes. “Do it, Jake. Whenever you’re ready, love. I’ve got you, baby.”

Watching Balthazar’s eyes carefully, Jake exhaled and began to tug gently forward, lowering his hips to take the man’s cock. He licked his lips. Balthazar watched him back, aiming himself and letting his hips move as Jake directed. He fed calm affirmation, validation, warmth, and acceptance through the link between their eyes, and Jake stopped blinking entirely.

Bal didn’t need to see their connection to aim. He kept his eyes on the beta’s, humming in pleasure when his boy pressed the head of Bal’s cock past the tight ring of muscle. Jake gasped and froze. 

“That’s it, baby. You got it. Take a second and breathe. It’s all you, sugar. Does it hurt?”

“A little,” Jake breathed.

“S’Okay. Take a minute. That’s normal. When you’re ready, keep going.”

Jake let go of Balthazar’s dick and transferred his sticky hands to his shoulders. He tore his gaze away from the Omega’s face and looked down between them. His face fell slack in wonder at the sight of half of the Omega’s cock disappearing into his body. Slowly, he pressed his hips forward, lowering his hands to Balthazar’s hips and pulling him in, sucking in the rest of the length, watching it vanish, feeling it fill him. He closed his eyes and threw his head back, bottoming out.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

“Not today, honey. Maybe when you come back and visit me again.”

Jake panted, feeling himself so full, so stretched. He lay still, taking it in, and Balthazar knew he had no idea where to go from here. “You ready?” Bal asked softly with a touch to his throat. “Nod when you’re ready.”

Jake nodded immediately, opening his eyes back up and dropping his knees as wide as they would go. Balthazar swooned. It didn’t get better than this. He had this boy’s complete trust, and he had a front row seat to the epiphany of discovery, of sexual enlightenment.

Slowly, he began to move, fucking as deeply as he could on his knees, thrusting his hips in a circular motion, angling to glance a touch off the beta’s prostate, earning pleasured gasps.

Jake clutched at his shoulders, tugging him down, and Balthazar lowered his torso until he covered the kid in a tight cocoon. Tentatively, he kissed Jake’s lips, earning an enthusiastic response, and soon his tongue explored deeply into the boy’s mouth while his hips pumped.

Eventually, to ensure that Jake could breathe, Balthazar reluctantly sat up again, he rolled his hips and watched Jake’s face. A fine sheen of sweat and a healthy flush accented the kid’s youth, but his eyes were hooded. He might be new to this, but he knew what felt good, and he was rolling in it.

“Hey, Jake?” Balthazar cooed softly, leaning back down.

“Huh?” 

“You’re not a virgin anymore.”

Jake laughed and shoved Balthazar’s shoulder playfully. Balthazar grinned. He watched, licking his lips, as Jake slid the fabric panel down and took himself in hand. He stroked his cock to the rhythm of Balthazar’s hips. He was gorgeous. Balthazar tucked the elastic of his jock strap behind his balls for him.

Jake rolled his own hips into his fist. Balthazar kept his pace steady, letting the kid work himself up at a measured pace, both of them enjoying the slow build. But Balthazar wasn’t about to let this hour end before the hour was up. He waited until a wrinkle appeared on Jake’s forehead between his eyes. He was close, climbing and hungry. Bal gently pulled Jake’s hand away by the wrist, holding his eyes with intense focus, and he pressed Jake’s wrist into the bed by his shoulder.

Jake’s pleasure turned to puzzlement and disappointment at being denied what was so very close. His breath hitched. He didn’t pull away though. He bit his lower lip, entranced at the look in Balthazar’s eyes, and he slowly placed his left hand up on the bed by his left shoulder as well. Balthazar smiled affectionately and covered his left wrist. He shifted his weight to hold Jake’s arms still, binding him to the bed.

“Good boy,” he whispered, leaning in for a kiss. “Just try it, okay? This is for you, Jake. If you don’t like it, say the word, and I’ll let go.”

Jake nodded, eyes wide.

Balthazar picked up his pace, reaching deep, sending loud slaps out at every thrust that bounced the beta’s cock off his belly, closing his eyes. Jake moaned again, spreading his legs as wide as he could, opening up his hips and offering himself in complete shamelessness. Balthazar felt himself cresting. He slowed and pulled out, easing the stretch with a massaging thumb over the gape of Jake’s asshole.

“Let’s try something else. Are you game? Do you trust me? I’m not going to hurt you Jake.”

“Okay,” huffed Jake, out of breath.

“Roll over, sweetheart. Get your knees under you. This way gives me better access to that sweet spot that made your hair light up. Remember that?”

“Uh-huh.” Jake rolled, tidily adjusting the towel beneath him and shuffling to give himself space from the headboard. Balthazar massaged his flank. He swiftly examined his condom, checking that it still had enough play left. He had another ready, but Bal decided the one he was wearing would hold.

“You’re a natural, Jake. You take to fucking like a frog in a pond. Are you ready?”

Jake nodded vehemently.

“Press back and take me in,” Bal instructed, arranging the head of his cock at Jake’s entrance and applying enough pressure to help ease it in as Jake pushed backward with both palms splayed against the bed. 

“Ohhhhhh!” they both groaned together.

“You feel divine, beta,” Balthazar added. “So tight for me.” He clutched the beta’s hips and rolled his. “I’m going to hit you hard and fast,” he advised. “All you have to do is hang on and feel.”

“Feels so good…” Jake slurred into the pillow.

“I’ll tell you what,” Balthazar added, still simply rolling his hips. “If you want me to, I’ll take care of your cock as well, and you can shoot off with me. There’s something really satisfying about coming together, Jake.”

“Yeah?”

“But what I’d like even better, if you want to, don’t touch yourself. Don’t come yet. I would love for you to try Topping before you leave here today. There’s two kinds of virginity for fellas, Jake. I’d love to be your first from both directions. What do you say?”

Jake panted into the pillow. The slow, rolling motion was beginning to wear. He nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Will you fuck me now, please?”

“So polite,” Balthazar grinned. He firmed his grip on the boy’s hips and he snapped his own forward, punching the breath right out of the ex-virgin and drawing a gasp. “Push back against the headboard, Jake. Press into me. Here we go.”

Balthazar unleashed. He watched for signs that the kid had grown too sore to find pleasure in his thrusts, but Jake melted entirely. Bal wound up holding him up by his hips as he fucked the boy for all he was worth. Giving up on keeping him off the bed, Bal let go and allowed the kid to flatten beneath him, never pausing his rhythm. He covered the kid down the length of his body and went at it as if he were racing an opponent. Sweat dripped from Balthazar’s nose and chin to mingle with the sweat of Jake’s back.

Balthazar felt it coming. He wrapped his arms beneath Jake’s shoulders, embraced him tight and intimate, stuttered a little, and then came hard, losing himself in the agonizing pleasure of a hard-won orgasm. 

He breathed with his eyes closed and his forehead pressed against Jake’s temple, coming down slowly.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked after a moment.

Balthazar laughed. “More than okay, honey. That was epic.”

Jake hesitated. “Uh…are we still gonna…?”

“Oh, yes. If you’re up for it.” Bal pulled up, pulled out, eased his weight off the young man, and slid the condom off his faded dick. He kneed to the edge of the bed and tossed the condom in his bedside disposal can before helping Jake turn over and inspecting him head to toe with a professional eye. Bal dropped a simple kiss on his lips. The boy was boneless, in no condition to fuck anything. But that wasn’t an impediment if he was willing. A seventeen-year-old boy who’d just had his backdoor cherry popped but who hadn’t come yet… Bal wasn’t worried that the kid’s cock lay flaccid on his belly. 

“How do you feel, sugar?” Balthazar asked in a soft, bedroom voice. He roamed his hands up and down Jake’s body, squeezing slightly now and then, kissing his lips now and then. They were soft lips, firm and plump, and Balthazar thought he might enjoy one day spending a whole hour sitting in this boy’s lap simply kissing him.

“I feel…kinda… floaty. Feels good.”

“Excellent. That’s the best possible answer, sweetness. Ready to sit up?”

“Yeah.”

“Easy does it. Floaty sometimes gives over to unconscious if you take it too fast. Tell me if you get woozy.”

“No, I’m good,” Jake assured his partner as he sat all the way up. “Oh!” he exclaimed as his weight shifted to press into his sore ass. “Is that normal?” he asked with wide eyes and a hand snaked under him.

“Absolutely normal. If you’re really a Bottom at heart, kiddo, it won’t bother you. If Bottoming isn’t right for you, it’ll bug the hell out of you. Only time and practice will tell.”

“Aches,” Jake added with a pained expression.

“I can help get your mind off the ache,” Bal reminded him.

“Yeah?” Jake smiled, charmed.

“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” the contractor instructed. “I’ll get your engines revving again. Shouldn’t take long. You’re already on the verge of stoking back up. Then I’m going to stand here and double over onto the bed. You stand behind me, and I’ll talk you through the rest. It’s easy as falling into a lake, Jake.”

“Okay,” Jake breathed. His cock twitched in interest. “You’ll tell me if I’m doing anything wrong?”

“Would I let you leave here with bad habits?” Bal teased. “Trust me, sugar. You’re going to be terrific.”

“Yeah. Okay. Where should I…?”

“Sit right where you are. Has anyone ever given you head, my darling?” Balthazar dropped to his knees between Jake’s knees.

“Uh…no. Not yet.”

“Unh!” Balthazar grunted in shock and pleasure. “I am the luckiest man alive. Hold on to something then, because this will blow your fucking mind! Knees open for me, love.”

Jake’s mouth dropped open as Balthazar’s enveloped his cock in warmth and wetness, and he cried out in alarm. “Oh my god!”

“Mmm,” Balthazar agreed. The beta went from half flagged to fully erect in an instant. Bal tasted the salty slickness of precome dribble onto his tongue and he grinned around the boy’s substantial girth. He played it cool and simple, keeping his eyes up on Jake’s face and a hand massaging his balls. He didn’t want to spoil it for the boy by timing badly. But Bal felt he could suck this boy’s dick all day and half the night and still want more.

Jake’s belly jumped with the effort to contain himself, and Balthazar reluctantly pulled off.

“Good, yes?” he teased.

“That was amazing!” Jake answered in wonder.

“Love, you have a whole world of exploration in front of you. Some things you’ll hate, but most…you’re going to love. Blowjobs, my boy, there’s really not much that’s better than a good hard suck-off.” He winked and whispered, “This is why it’s better to be a boy. Shh, don’t tell the girls.” Balthazar stroked Jake’s dick with his hand and then rolled a condom onto it, squeezing playfully as he went.

Jake laughed. He let Balthazar pull him up and watched with his lip caught in his teeth as the contractor bent over the bed and reached back to spread his cheeks.

“Just point and shoot, Jake,” Balthazar told him. “Your cock knows what to do.”

Jake was nervous but committed. He stepped closer and touched Balthazar’s ass cheek hesitantly. “Any advice?” he asked.

Balthazar glanced over his shoulder. “Once you’re in there, hold still for a couple of seconds, all right? Give yourself and your partner a chance to get used to the feeling. For the Bottom, that lets their ass relax so it doesn’t hurt as bad. That’s not so important if your Bottom is Omega, but for everyone else, the initial intrusion can hurt. Let them adjust. For the Top, sometimes that first shock of tight, hot constriction is enough to send you right over the edge and it can end before you even get started. Pausing for a beat helps the Top too. You understand? Go slow, Jake.”

“Okay. Go slow. Anything else?’ Jake had a hand around his cock, stroking idly, his eyes glued to Balthazar’s entrance.

“Don’t try to pull all the way out with your thrusts. If you slip out while your hips are still in motion, the crash of a loose cock against your partner’s ass hurts both of us. Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll feel the right depth when you get in there. Now come on. No more stalling. Get in there.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Jake stepped in close, letting his cock go and taking Balthazar by the hips.

“Use your hand to aim, Jake,” Balthazar coached.

The Omega turned front and closed his eyes, bearing down to open himself to the intrusion, and he sighed and collapsed onto his elbows when Jake found his mark and pressed in.

Jake panted behind him, trembling as he pressed in and bottomed out. “Christ Jesus,” he muttered.

“Hold, sugar. Hold. Touch my back if you want. Talk to me if you want.”

“Can’t talk,” Jake whined.

Bal chuckled. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready. Let’s start with tiny little pulses. Okay, darling? Pulse for me.”

Jake huffed stuttered breaths as he pulsed his hips. “I need to…”

“Are you ready?”

“Uh-huh,” Jake breathed.

“Then hit it, love. I want to ache just like you ache. Let me have it, Jake.”

“Aaahhhh!” Jake cried. His hips flew, his head fell back, his eyes squeezed shut. He fucked like his life depended upon it, pulling Bal into his thrusts with a death grip on each hip. 

He came in no time, whimpering to the ceiling and grinding his hips into Balthazar’s ass as if he wanted to meld with the man. Then he doubled over, collapsing against the Omega’s back.

The air reeked. Their sweat mingled. Heaving breaths countered each other. Jake’s cock slipped out wetly. Balthazar propped himself up on his elbow and looked back, breathing hard.

“That was incredible, love. You’re incredible, do you know that? I believe you’re ready for your Keller. You’re going to knock their socks off, kiddo.”

Jake chuckled and swallowed. “Is there time to do it again?” he asked hopefully.

Bal laughed and rolled over, tugging the boy onto the bed and into his arms. He removed Jake’s condom without ceremony and tossed it onto the side table behind him.

“Last lesson, honey. Cuddling. Come and snuggle with me a while. This is part of the payout. Feel the endorphins running through your blood? Smell the oxytocin in the air? Lounge in it for a bit, Jake. No stress. No pressure. Nowhere to be but right here. And if you feel like kissing me, I wouldn’t be opposed to that.”

Balthazar said goodbye reluctantly, fervently wishing every day good start like this one. The kid was so young, so malleable, so eager, so trusting… 

_”Love_ my job,” Balthazar quipped to a fellow Omega contractor as he slipped into the shower.

***************

Michael drove his own car. He steadfastly refused to unseat Pete to allow the security dick to ride up front, so the asshole was pouting in the back seat.

Pouting!

As if he would be any less effective from the back seat.

Michael glanced in his rearview mirror. _’Men!’_ he thought testily. With these guys, every interaction had to account for an oversized ego or there would be a tantrum to field. Fuck that. Michael didn’t give a fuck about this guy’s ego, and he didn’t care if he pouted except that it spiked the close air in the car and made Alex edgy. Michael turned the fan blower up, hoping to circulate the cloying spike right out of his car.

“All I’m saying is you shouldn’t walk on eggshells around her,” April continued.

And there was the real cause of Michael’s irritation. He’d been arguing with Pete long enough now that they’d begun going in circles.

“I’m not walking on fucking eggshells,” he disagreed, annoyed, beginning to seethe. “I’m giving her a safe place to live. Would you rather I turn my wolf on so she can see what it’s really like to live in the Winchester Pack? Did you think that birthday showcase of Castiel’s, that power trip, was a good introduction for her? Do you want me to bite her head off for leaving her cereal bowl in the sink? What exactly do you want me to change, Pete?”

“You’re treating her like she’s going to go scurrying into her burrow if she sees us going about our normal lives!” April insisted. Her volume increased unnecessarily, starting to turn shrill. “You creep around, trying not to spook her, smiling like an idiot every time she looks at you. It’s creepy, and it’s weird. And besides, I didn’t notice you complaining about that showcase when it was your turn on Dean’s ass. Yours was the harshest of the three. All I’m saying is that instead of scaring her with the Dominant grandstanding or freaking her out by plying her with some kind of false intimacy, we should get back to normal, and let her come out of her shell at her own pace.”

Michael sighed and steered left. “Are you worried I’m going to make a move on her, Pete? Cause that’s not happening. She’s hurt, and she’s scared, she’s fighting constant urges to go back to the woman who stole her Mating-bond, and she’s waiting to find out if she’s carrying that woman’s pup. Excuse me if it seems to me that she could use a gentle touch right now. That’s not false intimacy. It’s kindness.”

“It’s bullshit, Michael. I can feel your emotions when you talk to her. You’re on the edge of your seat, drooling over her neediness. You’re waiting for her to encounter a puddle so you can be the magnanimous gentleman and lay your cloak across it.” April scowled at her own words, apparently surprised that last comment had made it past her filter.

The security guard in the back seat huffed a short, contemptuous laugh, and Michael glared at him.

“Why is it any of your business in the first place?” he challenged, hoping to find a way out of the argument. “What are you, my social etiquette nanny? Why do you care one way or another?”

She licked her lips and turned in her seat. “She doesn’t need another savior,” April insisted. Her volume increased further as she made her case. “She needs a family. If you keep trying to be her knight-protector, she’s going to freak out and bail!”

“Stop shouting at me, Pete. I can hear you just fine,” Michael bit out.

“Really?” April squeaked. “Well, it doesn’t seem like you’re listening!”

Security dick piped up from the back seat with: “If you two are gonna scratch each other’s eyes out, would you mind pulling over first? I don’t wanna die in a car wreck.”

“Nobody’s talking to you!” both wolves retorted in tandem. They each scowled and then huffed in annoyance. Michael turned into the ACRI parking lot and put the car in park. He stared at his lap, high bright circles on his cheeks giving away his annoyance even more than his bond-link did.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me to do,” he told her simply. “What exactly bugs you so much about how I am around Kate? You don’t have anything to worry about, April. I’m not going after her; not now, not ever.”

She sighed in frustration and got out of the car. Michael followed suit, catching her eye over the car’s roof and gritting his teeth. “Michael, I’m not _jealous,_ damnit. But you’re acting like you’ve never been around anyone who’s had a traumatic experience, and it’s fucking _weird,_ okay? How did you feel after you watched that Omega lose his life and his pup in a violent attack when all the alphas in the house wanted to follow you around with a pillow in case you fainted? Wasn’t there a part of you that wanted to shoo them all away so you could circle up with just us Omegas and finally get _real?”_

“That’s exactly what I’m offering!” Michael objected.

“You can’t force it on her, Michael! You’re a total stranger to her. You need to back off!” April turned and stalked away.

Michael ignored the security guard. He opened the back door and extracted his son. Then he followed April to the doors, using the visitors’ entrance. He didn’t look back to check if the guard had followed or buggered off to the pub. Michael didn’t care.

“Whoa!” Charlie exclaimed as she met the two of them stalking side by side down the hall, decidedly not looking at each other. Charlie stopped them. “Tension. Knife. Cut. And I mean, like, wow. What up, bitches?”

“Not now, Charlie,” Michael groused, squeezing past her with Alex on his way to Dean’s office. Charlie let Michael go, but she snatched Ace out of his arms and then leveled April with a faux-stern look.

April rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. “Men,” she offered by way of explanation.

“Well, that just about explains it,” Charlie agreed. She grinned as she tickled Alex’s belly. “What brings you two up to our neck of the woods? Playdate with Aunt Charlie?”

“Michael’s got an eval meeting with Jody and the nurse supervisor he worked for last week up at the hospital. Figured I’d tag along for support. I needed to get out of the house anyway.”

“Ooh, that sounds important,” Charlie said. “If he gets a good review, that could really help his career. We tend to get too incestuous here in our own lair. Having input on the record from unaffiliated sources means a lot.”

“I know,” April sighed. “It means a lot to Michael, and I wanted to be there for him. But he’s being such a prick right now, I don’t know if it’d be a help to have me there or if I’m just on his nerves.”

“Pete, are you coming?” Michael practically bellowed from outside Dean’s office door.

“Wow,” Charlie repeated. “Someone pissed in the whole box of Cheerios.”

April replied to Charlie with a weighted look, all about how dealing with men was often not worth the trouble, and Charlie winked and handed Alex back.

“Bye, Scooter!” the redhead chirped, wiggling her fingers at Alex. He waved back shyly and then clung to April’s neck.

Inside Dean’s office, Michael sat moping on the couch, and Dean stood studying his mate. The alpha looked up and grinned when April entered. “Hey! Look who came to visit Daddy at work! Come ‘ere, Ace.”

“Dah-dee!”

April set the pup on the carpeted floor by the door and let him amble to where Dean squatted by his desk. Dean swamped him with adoring kisses. “Where are the triplets?” he asked as he emerged chuckling.

“Napping at home. We figure it’s better to take one or two out at a time instead of the whole litter every time we need to run out for something.”

“Run out for something,” Michael repeated sourly. “I guess this is just an errand to you. I thought you supported my training, Pete. No one made you come.”

“Whoa!” Dean exclaimed, spinning on his heel. “What’s this?”

“Nothing,” Michael dismissed. “Just a stupid argument.”

“You’re arguing?” Dean clarified. “You two?” He pointed a finger back and forth between them. “You two,” he repeated in disbelief.

“Yes, Dean. We’re arguing. Why is this difficult to comprehend? You and I argue all the fucking time. I’d think you understood the concept by now.” Michael was in fine form, throwing a solo pity party and feeling massively misunderstood.

Dean grinned. “Oh, I do, man. I get arguing. I’ve just never seen the two of you go at it, that’s all. Damn, it’s about fucking time. I’d about given up on you guys. I wonder if Charlie has a betting pool going? I should’ve thought to get in on that action.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Michael demanded, obviously offended.

Dean stood up with Alex and held an arm out to draw April in. He kissed her temple when she joined him. “You two have been going through the relationship motions for-frikken-ever, Michael. You’re so polite and careful it’s nauseating. I had about given up hope you’d ever take the rose-colored glasses off and start really talking to each other. It’s a relief to see you get real, that’s all.”

“Not everyone fights as much with all their loved ones as they all seem to do with you, Dean. Maybe your perspective is skewed.” Michael lay down on the sofa and stretched out.

“That,” said Dean with a finger pointing right at his mate that Alex mimicked, “was hurtful and uncalled for. Don’t be mean, Omega. I don’t argue all by myself.” The alpha infused a Secondary weight in his tone. Alex’s eyes widened.

“Go ahead and spank me, Dean. It won’t change anything. I’m wrong. I’m wrong now. I’ll be wrong after you bust my ass. I’m always wrong. So, whatever.”

Dean snorted and sat down on Michael’s thighs, causing Michael to flinch. “The argument is none of my business, if you wanna keep it to yourselves” Dean added. “But I wanna reassure you both, that this is a good thing in the end. Just don’t let it fester and don’t take it up to the hospital with you. We’ve got a few minutes if you want to hash it out now. I can probably help.”

“Get off my legs, alpha,” Michael grumped.

Dean rolled back up to his feet. Sitting on a firm and uneven surface hurt anyway. “April? Nothing to say?”

April peeked at Michael over Dean’s shoulder. He wasn’t looking at her. He had his gaze fixed to the ceiling. “Michael’s doing the ‘Knight in shining armor’ routine for Kate’s benefit, and I think it makes him look like a creep. He’s freaking her out.”

Dean’s brows shot up. Then he laughed a little. “If I recall, kid, you ate that routine up when he did it for you.”

“It’s not funny,” she protested. “If he was just making a fool of himself, I wouldn’t care, but Kate doesn’t have any idea what to do with him, and he’s sabotaging my chances to make a real friend in the Pack. She’s closer to my age and my designations than we’ve ever had in the house before, Dean, and I like her. She’s nice, when she’s not freaked out trying to figure out what the hovering dude at her shoulder wants all the time!”

“Oh. That’s…”

“All I did was ask Michael to cool it a little with the overactive chivalry and let her breathe, and now he’s pouting because I injured his delicate ego. She doesn’t need another Dominant in her face. She needs a friend.”

“Ah,” Dean added. He’d noticed the same worrisome behavior. He had vowed to give Michael some time to get it out of his system, but eventually, he knew, someone would have to steer Michael onto a different track. His savior complex was not going to be good for Kate. It didn’t help that April had chosen to deliver the message in a patronizing lecture.

Michael was watching his mate, and he felt the pins click in Dean’s head.

“I see,” Michael said as he sat up. “You’re on her side. Okay. I get it. I’m an overbearing asshole who can’t stop cramming assistance into people’s faces whether they need it or not. Fine. You think I’m going to confuse which mouth to spoon the baby food into. All right. I’ll leave her alone. I won’t say a word to her. She’s all yours, Pete. Maybe I’m the one who should be jealous. Maybe it’s the two of you who are going to run off together.”

“Stop it,” Dean demanded staunchly. “Stop that shit right now. April doesn’t deserve that. Do you even hear yourself?”

Michael clamped his mouth shut and sat glowering at the floor between his feet with his nostrils flaring. “I didn’t mean it,” he muttered eventually. April watched him sadly. “I’m not jealous, and I’m not accusing you of anything. I feel stupid, okay? I thought I was being nice. It’s hard to come into a house full of tight-knit pack as abruptly as she did and not be sure if the people around you are sharks. I never meant to hover or seem creepy.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Then he shook his head at his own internal dialogue. He looked up at Dean, then at April. “I don’t know any other way to relate to an Ozzie. It just happens. My wolf…”

“You’ve already proven you have the control to kennel the wolf,” Dean reminded him softly.

“Yeah, but maybe that’s not what Kate needs. Look, a professional persona is one thing. I understand why my wolf can’t be a part of that. But at home, with my Pack… it may be weird or creepy or stupid to you, but this is who I am. My wolf is a world-class asshole, but most of the time, he gets this one thing right. No one hurts my Pack. No one goes without care and attention in _my_ Pack, not if I can provide for them. And you didn’t have to make fun. It’s not necessary to humiliate me to make your point.”

“I’m not asking you to be someone you’re not, Michael,” April told him as she knelt between his knees and took his hands. He stiffened, pulling away. “I’m just asking you to follow Kate’s lead until she knows what she’s about. Hanging over her like that, it’s…Michael, you’re making it about you, about how _you_ feel when you know she’s safe and warm and fed and sheltered. If she was healthy and secure right now, I’d say have at her. She can cope with whatever you decide to try throwing at her. But she’s not healthy. She’s not secure. She’s pretty fucking broken, and she needs us all to back up and give her some air. Baby, she’s not going to starve or fall out of her bed at night without you hanging right on her heels. Let her come to you. Be nice to her, I’m not saying she needs you aloof. But let her come feel you out. And she will. I swear. God, Michael, your wolf, it…it’s magnetic to an Ozzie. She’s going to be pulled to you once she feels safer. Everything you’re looking for from her, that’s all going to happen if you don’t drive her up the wall being a babysitter first.”

“Dah-dee, dat!” Alex shouted, physically turning Dean’s face toward a brass elephant on his shelf and pointing. Dean set Alex on his feet and handed the elephant to him.

“Hands and eyes, Ace, not your mouth,” Dean reminded him. Alex plopped down onto his bottom and then rolled onto his belly and began to gallop the elephant along the carpet.

“Look, I hear you, okay?” Michael replied churlishly, scowling at April. “I suck. I’ll own that. But don’t get all outta sorts that I’m making this about me when your chief reason to pull me back is so you can have a new BFF. Maybe she doesn’t need you pressing in on her any more than she does me.”

April blushed slightly and lowered her eyes.

Someone knocked on Dean’s office door and then cracked it open. Jody poked her head in.

“Good. Right on time. You ready?” She came all the way in and spotted the toddler under Dean’s desk. “Well, hey there, kiddo! This is a treat! Thanks for driving your O-Pop out to see me. Can I borrow him for a little while if I promise to give him back?”

Alex’s eyes grew impossibly wide, and he abandoned his elephant to scuttle straight to Dean and hide behind his legs. 

“Aw, sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Jody grinned. “God, it’s been a long time.”

Dean lifted his son to his hip. “I’ve got to get back to work, folks. Who’s going and who’s staying?”

“Pete?” Michael prompted with an annoyed sigh. “It’s your call. You and Ace can hang out here, go chill in one of the suites and wait for me. Hell, go on home if you want. I’ll catch a ride back later.” The chip on his shoulder threatened to overbalance him, so heavy was it in his tone.

“I want to come with you,” she affirmed with a sour resolution. “We’ll wait at the cafeteria or one of the waiting areas or something. I’d like to see where you worked, if that’s allowed. I won’t go if you don’t want me there.”

Michael nodded, a little shellshocked from his unhappy intervention, and he heaved himself to his feet, taking Alex from Dean. “Do whatever you want,” he groused.

“I think that’s a terrific idea,” Jody agreed cheerfully, ignoring the tension and turning her smile on April. “We can give you a tour. I’ll explain how they sequestered six whole sectors in a flash, and you can see how they’re normally just another part of the hospital. Michael, will you drive?”

“I think I lost my bodyguard,” he grumped, steering around Dean without his usual touch.

“He’s waiting for you in the hall.” Jody pointed over her shoulder with her thumb.

“Well, damn. I’ll try harder next time.”

Jody ushered them both out the door after April collected Alex back. The beta shot a puzzled and slightly amused look toward Dean on her way out. She hadn’t missed the tension between the two Omegas, but she’d clearly chosen to ignore it.

***************

The debrief was a non-event in the end, much like a parent-teacher conference for a kid with no real issues. There was a lot of simple praise, no meaty specifics, and some inside joshing between Missy and Jody that Michael wasn’t privy to. But he left the meeting with a signed general reference letter and a promise that if he needed a good word later on, Missy would hook him up. She didn’t spend any time on a sales pitch toward Lawrence Memorial’s Secondary therapy staff. Missy knew Michael was going nowhere outside the ACRI, possibly ever. She did ask him if he would consider signing on to the ad-hoc call-out roster though, once he was actually certified, that is. 

So, it turned out that Michael’s work in the hospital had been completely legal, even his brief stint alone with Kate before Dean finally nutted up enough to open the door. With all the oversight cameras, he was never actually without supervision, and he hadn’t done any work that wasn’t already part of his training regimen. And here Michael thought he had been flying under a radar of sorts, slipped in where there weren’t enough trained professionals and in a pinch, any warm body was better than none.

Missy and Jody both laughed affectionately at the idea that the hospital would ever have allowed an incompetent near its patients.

“We’re regulated to our toenails, Michael,” Missy added. “You were vetted and tagged all the way back in the registration tent as a second-year with six months hands on experience. We didn’t put you anywhere you weren’t supposed to be. I had my eye on you the whole way. There aren’t really that many Omegas in this profession. We keep track of our own. We have to. Every Omega who’s ever handled a syringe was on that wing last week, and we still ran short. We were just lucky your own facility hadn’t put you to work, leaving you free for us to snap you up.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Michael said politely, although she seemed to be saying that any loser with enough hours would’ve been snapped up just as quickly, even if they didn’t know an O.T. trace from an O2 reading.

“Any questions?” Missy asked, but she was already getting up. It was clear Michael was out of time, and she hadn’t been all that useful to him anyway. He shook his head and thanked her for her time.

Walking back down three flights of stairs, he checked his phone. “April took Alex out front to walk around,” he shared with Jody from his texts. “She’s got this crazy idea that cold air is good for him.”

Michael halted abruptly at the bottom step, nearly bowling into Jody from behind as he left the stairway into the main lobby. She’d stopped dead with her first view out the front sliding glass doors and vaulted windows. There were people everywhere. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. The parking lot overflowed with a milling, spiraling flood of people all crammed closely together. Michael gaped, coming up to stand beside Jody. The throng seemed to be moving right up toward the doors where a line of security personal stood forming a solid line facing outward.

“Jody, what…?”

“Some of them have signs,” Jody observed, squinting.

Michael realized the lobby was mostly empty.

“Folks, can we get you to exit through the rear doors?” 

“What?” asked Michael, taking a slow step forward. “What is this?”

The security guard who had addressed them was a short severe-looking woman in her middle years. Primate, not Lupin. “There is a disturbance in the front lot,” she explained. “We’re asking everyone to exit toward the rear. We haven’t ascertained if there’s any hazard yet, but we’re taking precautions for everyone’s safety. If you have business elsewhere in the hospital, please find a route that does not go through the lobby. If you’re finished for the day, you need to exit toward the back. Do not attempt to access your vehicle if it’s in front. We’ll sort this out swiftly and signal when it’s safe.”

She herded Jody and Michael away from the stairs and the glass and the doors and the signs, but Michael stood his ground. “Pete’s out there,” he whispered. “Oh, god.” Dread filled him as he stretched out through his link with April and found a muted, stilted, vibrating spasm of worry on the other side. She was close. She was outside. She wasn’t safe, that much he knew. But only one clear thought echoed hollowly in his head: his last words to April had been snippy, childish and mean. Michael felt his face drain of blood as his fingers turned numb.

“Michael,” Jody caught his sleeve. “You can’t go out there. I can read some of the signs. It’s a protest march. There’re protesting _YOU_, Michael. Or…Omega medical staff just like you. Why aren’t the police clearing them out?!” Jody rounded on the security guard. “There’s no way this is a legal demonstration. The hospital would have known. We all would have been notified. Why are you just standing there?”

“April… God, _Alex!”_ Michael took off running, and Jody dashed after him. 

“No, you really can’t go that way! We’ve locked the doors!” But the poor security guard’s shouts were futile, and she didn’t pursue them. Michael crashed against the door, banging on it and shoving against it to no avail.

Jody tugged his sleeve. He shook her off. 

“She’s not unguarded, Omega! She’s not alone. She has a bodyguard with her. Jesus, check your phone! She’s probably trying to reach you to tell you she’s safe! Michael, stop! They’re going to see you! You can’t face the lot of them if they turn into a mob! Goddamnit, Omega, if they spot you this could turn into a riot! Those are Ultra-Traditional cultists! _LOOK_ at them!”

Michael’s chest heaved, but he stopped attacking the door and pulled his phone from his pocket. He dropped it, then kicked it in his fumbling, following as it skittered wildly across the smooth tiles before collecting it up again and ducking behind a support column.

“No, there’s nothing!” he lamented, searching each avenue April might have used, kicking himself for wasting the morning in a pointless, trivial, ego-bruising argument. And then a text appeared.

PETE: _”Don’t use the front door! I don’t know who they are, but there are a lot of them, and they’re very angry.”_

Michael’s fingers shook too badly to text, so he called her instead. She answered immediately, whispering into Michael’s ear.

_“Shh. They haven’t spotted me yet,”_ she told him, and Michael’s heartrate spiked. 

“Is the bodyguard with you?” Michael demanded.

_“Shh!”_ she repeated. Michael could hear angry voices through her phone, and they sounded far too close. _”We got separated. He was watching from a few yards away. Alex wanted to see the flowers, so we went through the grass by the big windows to get a closer look. The guard got cut off when these crazies stormed the parking lot.”_

“Pete, are you safe right now? Where are you?”

Michael heard her gulp loudly, and her voice changed volume as if constantly turning her head to check every direction. _”I’m behind a bush in the raised section of the garden, right up by the building’s wall in the ivy near where the big windows start. They haven’t seen me. But I don’t know if I can keep Alex quiet. He’s getting restless. Michael, I’m scared. Some of the signs they’re carrying. These guys aren’t joking.”_ She gasped suddenly, and Michael heard the shuffling of leaves and foliage. _“Oh, god, they’re heading this way!”_ she squealed in a desperate whisper. _“It looks like they want to use the height of the raised bed as a podium. Michael, I’m trapped!”_

“No, you’re fucking not!” Michael hissed. “Stay down. Keep Alex calm. I’m coming, baby. Don’t be scared.”

He looked up at Jody, whose eyes were enormous but who, to her credit, looked game for whatever came next. “Did you contact Cas?” he asked her.

“No answer,” she replied. “But I sent a group text to all of your alphas and Gabe.”

“Put your phone on silent,” he instructed. “We don’t want to attract attention.” Michael scoped for the short guard who’d tried to shunt him out the back. She was herding others down the steps and out the back door. Relieved that she was distracted, Michael darted to the left down the long hall that led off the lobby, parallel to the front entrance drive. The wail of sirens began to filter in through the tall windows in front of them.

“What are you doing?” Jody hissed as she followed.

“We need to find a way out. Look for any door that might open to the outside.”

“Michael you can’t go out there.”

“I have to get to Pete and Alex.”

“The cops are on their way, Omega. I’ll send them an SOS that there’s a mother and child trapped between the crowd and front wall. They’re trained to handle this.”

Michael rounded on her furiously with eyes glowing golden. “She’s an _OMEGA,_ Jody! No cop is going to risk getting shot for an Ozzie! They’ll send us condolences, and they’ll write a report, but they won’t intervene. _You stay here!”_ He commanded, and those last three words echoed with power, seeming to reverberate along the abandoned hallway. Jody’s mouth fell slack and she took an unwitting step back, blinking rapidly. The sirens approached, their volume peaking, but the sound of angry shouts rose higher still. Right on the other side of the wall, a bullhorn or amplified speaker trembled to life.

“Jesus, I know that voice,” Jody gasped. She looked swamped with dread. She licked her lips and clutched at Michael. “You gotta get her outta there. That’s Monroe Styne. He’s as crazy as they come, and his followers will do anything he says. If they spot April, there’s no telling what they’ll do. This…this is an Ultra-Traditionalist mob. It’s a cult, Michael. They despise Omegas, especially those who try to be anything but home-bound slaves.”

Michael didn’t need the data dump. He recognized the voice too. “I need a fucking door. A window. A damn garbage chute! Get me out of here!” Michael jogged down the hall. “Here!” It was a shaded single heavy door with a push-bar and a “Not an Exit” sign, but when Michael shoved it, it opened. He emerged near a covered walk that crossed the drive toward a parking garage. Michael jumped the low hedge to his right and took off jogging along the brick building, doubling back the way he’d come, and watching all around him. There were people everywhere, crowding in closer and closer to the hospital entrance. Police cars descended from multiple directions.

Michael could read the signs now.

He put that out of his mind. Only April and Alex mattered. 

“Michael!” a voice from his left, out in the crowd. Their security detail emerged from the throng, shoving hard at the idiots with their signs and their propaganda.

“Have you spotted her,” Michael hissed, grabbing the man’s arm and pulling him close. “Where is she? Why the hell aren’t you with her?!”

“She’s just to the right of that podium they put up. We can’t get to her without every idiot seeing.”

“Then let them see,” Michael was angrier than he’d ever been in his life. A part of his brain registered the insanity of the drivel the douche at the microphone was spouting. He was ranting to shut down this travesty of a hospital that allowed Omegas to work with the public, _Omegas,_ for god’s sake, little more than savage children themselves. He blustered about having video proof from the mass hysteria of the Septennial that Omegas had taken the place by storm and had run amok through the halls, strangling old ladies in their beds and fucking their dead bodies; performing ritual sacrifice in the maternity wards, he ranted, killing fine alpha doctors and slicing open beta mothers in labor, ripping their unborn infants out by their legs and eating them alive before the mothers bled out.

There was no way this rally was a spontaneous gathering; no way in hell. There were definitely crazies in this part of the world, but not in numbers like this. They’d known what the Septennial would bring to hospitals, and they’d planned a strike in the weary aftermath – a strike right here in Lawrence where the seat of the new Lupin crusade was based. It was a strike on Castiel, himself, and his own mate sat trapped right in its midst, helpless and terrified. 

If they found her…

“No, you can’t!” The bodyguard took hold around Michael’s chest, but Michael leveled his eyes back over his shoulder and growled in a tone the man had never heard before. He let go and stood gaping as Michael prepared to push through the tightening throng.

“Call in,” Michael instructed over his shoulder. “Send for help.”

“Jesus,” the bodyguard muttered, buffeted by the crowd. He lost sight of Michael quickly.

And then they found her. A thug lackey thrashing through the bushes in search of an exterior power outlet spotted April and pounced, and the whole crowd heard her shriek as he lifted her from her hiding place by her hair with Alex crushed to her chest. The pup wailed in terror. Michael shot forward, flattening cultists who got in his way, and he achieved the low corner of the raised planter before Monroe Styne even reacted to the unlikely catch.

“She’s Omega,” the lackey told his boss with a deep whiff of her throat. April slapped him. Michael needed to get closer – too many yards between him and his beloved Pack. The prick with his fingers tangled in her hair barely acknowledged the slap. He held her at a slight distance, turning her head to get a good look. He ignored the screaming pup completely, and his voice carried when he spoke, projecting for the crowd. “She looks like that Winchester bitch who’s been on TV. What say, Winchester bitch? Don’t you know Omegas belong at home cooking my supper?”

They hadn’t noticed Michael yet, advancing on them in rage.

The blond-haired idiot wrapped a hand across her neck, forcing her head up, and Michael saw red.

“Get your _fucking_ hands off her! NOW!” he bellowed, storming forward. The crowd pressed in along the edge of the platform as it rose higher in the middle, but Michael dodged. They were low enough at this angle that they couldn’t reach him without climbing. He was close now, close to the lectern, close to his Pete, his son…

Something took Michael over from within, something implacable and ageless, and he didn’t even think about resisting. His feet felt elevated above the ground. His eyes took in the weight, and the location, and the significance of this exact moment in time. He saw with a vision that reached into every moment in time, both before and behind this one, into every mind and heart, into every motive, pure and impure, into every chain of events that brought each individual to descend upon this place on this, the day of Michael’s ascension, and he knew what it was to be omnipotent.

“See, what we have here is a prime example of upbringing gone wrong,” Monroe drawled into the lectern as Michael bore down on him, enraged. Michael reached him before any of the guards caught up and punched him full across the face. The Alpha spun backward and clutched his broken nose, stunned to find that an Omega could even launch such an attack in the first place, much less see it through. The crowd surged again, many of them scaling the wall and rushing Michael and April’s position.

_”STAY WHERE YOU ARE!!”_ Michael called in a voice that echoed even under a limitless, open sky and seemed to reverberate back and forth from mind to mind, through channels rarely used in the physical world, and they all stopped. All of them. Those in the back stopped as well, but they couldn’t have said why. A muttering susurration, carried by the cold January breeze sent sounds of confusion forward. Michael turned his attention to the man holding April.

His voice resounded, and his eyes flashed. _”GET. YOUR FUCKING. HANDS. OFF. RIGHT NOW. AND GET ON YOUR FUCKING KNEES!!”_

Dire warning, fury, resolute power shot from Michael’s whole body, flashing from his eyes and seeming to bathe him in haloed light.

The man stood slack jawed. All the fight in his muscles vanished at Michael’s vehemence. His grip fell slack. Slowly, he dropped to his knees. Michael lunged forward and caught her up, bracing her. “Are you all right? I’ve got you, Pete. Can you hold Alex?” he asked as he enveloped her in his arms and smoothed her hair. “I may need my hands.”

“I’ve got him,” April affirmed. “I’m okay. I’m not hurt.” Michael kept an arm around her, but he turned to face the leader of the cult, now moaning with a broken nose, hunched over with his face in his hands, but his stunned eyes tracking the unthinkable man before him.

Michael’s eyes glittered bright golden, a backlit haloed glow that sparkled in the sunshine and turned him ethereal. He stood tall and proud, merciless in his wrath. He pointed to Monroe Styne, not three feet away, and without speaking, Michael took the alpha-Dominant all the way to his knees. Michael lowered his arm slowly, and the man’s body followed his command, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief.

Michael left a warm kiss on his son’s temple, shared a bracing look and a nod with April, and tucked them both behind him. He pulled the cheap microphone off its cradle. Holding it loose at his side, he growled. Michael needed no amplification to be heard. That growl, it was a terrifying sound. He stalked closer to Styne. The man stumbled backward on his knees through the dense ivy as Michael loomed above him, wavering before finding balance again at the cold judgment on Michael’s face.

_”I’ve had enough of this bullshit,”_ Michael told him, speaking in words they would understand. His voice carried through a powerful, supernatural diaphragmatic projection with an unworldly echo, and they held an impossible weight, despite the lowbrow vernacular. It wasn’t volume that proved Michael’s strength. It was something far more primal, and no one, it seemed, was immune. _“You owe compensation to every Omega you’ve ever harmed. But you’re going to start by explaining to these cretins you call followers that you’re dead wrong, about all of it. Phrase your words carefully, Alpha. You only get one shot.”_

Michael tossed the microphone onto the ivy in front of Styne’s knees. Turning to face the crowd, Michael could see police arrayed behind them, containing the crowd in a semi-circle against the brick and glass building, but keeping their distance. He could feel Dean and Cas moving swiftly closer, still somewhere on the city streets, fighting traffic lights and sweating bullets. He felt the eyes of the world, of countless generations past and those not yet born, resting upon him and lending him stature. He felt a surreal sense of timelessness and invincibility. He looked out at the sea of stunned faces, and he felt like he knew every sordid, disgusting detail of their wasted lives. 

Michael became, in that moment, an embodiment of mystic canine authority, an archangel, and he was as beautiful as he was terrifying.

He snarled in revulsion, and the first few rows backed up, pressing against those behind them.

_”On your knees, all of you!”_ he ordered, reverberation ringing in their ears. _”Your leader has something important to say, and we’re only doing this once!”_ At his first sentence, those closest dropped immediately. Further back, people hesitated. _”DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!! NOW!!!”_

And the entire crowd lowered, including a few of the cops. Here and there, an aged or disabled wolf teetered precariously, unable to kneel due to a malady, but Michael ignored them. They had all dropped their heads, and that was enough.

_”SAY IT!”_ he demanded, pointing at Styne. _”Tell them!”_

The old man huffed in consternation, a sound carried by the microphone he clutched to his chest. Behind him, Michael smelled his own Pack bodyguard approaching. He turned his head fractionally to send April away with the man, but she clung to Michael. Michael watched long enough to make sure the bloodied man on the ground before him wasn’t planning a counterassault, and then he turned and hissed at her to take Alex and go. She gave him a pleading look, but he shook his head slightly and nocked his chin to send her off, sending her a staunch affirmation of his devotion through their bond. She left a kiss on Michael’s palm and then allowed the guard to hustle her away with her son.

Monroe Styne knelt quaking before Michael Quentin, his jaw shaking, and a dark streak staining the inseam of his trousers. Michael returned his attention to his enemy, belittled though the man was now.

“Tell them,” Michael repeated in his normal voice. His eyes still shone with inner light. He was still hypnotic and unassailable. He was still the archangel of justice. The breeze lifted his hair in gentle waves. He wasn’t cold. He felt very much like he could fly.

“Um…I…People can be…mistaken.” The cult leader’s voice shook in a way Michael was certain his followers had never heard from him. “I…may have been…”

“Wrong,” Michael interrupted bluntly, and in the silence that had descended over the parking lot, he didn’t need a microphone or a stereophonic voice for everyone to hear him. “The word you want is wrong. You were wrong. Say it. SAY IT!”

“I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?” Michael prompted. “Where do Omegas belong?”

“I…” Styne huffed in confusion.

“Do I look like a _CHILD_ to you?” Michael asked him, thundering closer, and the old man stumbled backward on his knees. He fell backward onto his butt and stayed there.

“You knelt to me,” Michael went on, approaching slowly. “All of you knelt to me because you know from within your own canine souls that I am your _Dominant_, and it is written within ancient intractable law that you MUST kneel to me. I am also…OMEGA! And when you leave here your friends and colleagues will try to convince you that I’ve poisoned your minds, that I am unhinged and dangerous. Well, I AM dangerous, but I am far from unhinged, and I am not maladjusted. I am not brainwashed…” Michael continued his very slow progress forward, closing the distance toward his enemy. “… or incompetent, or delusional, or insane, or unstable. I am _Omega,_ and I carry within me a power so bottomless and so ageless that it is unfathomable to small minds like yours. You fear me, Alpha, as you fear all Omegas, not because we are weak or helpless, or dependent, or inept, or bestial, but because we have access to a core of power that is limitless, and you don’t. You can feel the truth in your bones. And you may leave this place with denial on your lips, but you will never again convince yourself or anyone else that there is truth to your lies. You may tell them all that there was witchcraft, or hysteria, or powerful drugs at play here today, but YOU KNOW DIFFERENTLY, DON’T YOU!? You can feel it. I see it in your eyes. It’s enough now. _ENOUGH!!”_

Michael stood over him, straight-backed, fearless, furious, and the Alpha cowered. Michael turned his back on the cultist, turned his back on the petrified lackey, faced outward to address the throng. If Michael hadn’t owned the moment as confidently as he claimed, he would’ve been vulnerable to them both. But he didn’t fear them. He’d read them both to their cores, and they were as harmless as newborn kittens now. 

Michael ignored them, an act that by itself proved his victory. He spoke to the silent crowd, shivering painfully on their knees on the damp asphalt. “So, you’re going to leave this place, abandon your stupid signs, and you’re going to go home to your families. You’re going to throw away your pamphlets and your propaganda, and you’re going to volunteer your time to Omega outreach instead, to your community schools and hospitals, to the weak and destitute and disabled, to the old and infirm.” Michael’s tone shifted lower as his lip curled in disgust. He looked out at the crowd of shocked faces. “Because you are humans, not animals, and it’s time you _remembered_ that!”

Michael turned back to face Monroe, an old man who had aged a lifetime in the last five minutes. He snatched the microphone out of the man’s shaky hand and chucked it at the lectern. “And you,” Michael added coldly. “You’re going to fix everything you broke, and you’re going to compensate my family for terrorizing my son and his mother. Come with me.”

Michael spun on his heel, leaving the man to struggle to his feet and follow helplessly as the Omega stormed back the way he’d come, seeking April by bond-link. Behind him, uneven footsteps followed at a stuttering jog. The crowd parted before them both, baffled people stumbling to their feet and pulling away from Michael and his leashed dog.

“I don’t…I don’t understand what’s happening,” Styne told him as Michael finally stopped clear of the crowd and looked around. Michael spotted a manned ambulance a few yards away, and he led the bleeding man to the EMTs standing by.

“I punched this man,” he told them. “His nose is broken. Patch him up, but don’t let him leave until Castiel arrives.”

They took Styne toward the back of the ambulance, and Michael began to shake. It began as minor tremors, but then the world spun and he lost his balance, dropping to his knees with his hands gripping the sides of his head. He sought April with frantic eyes, and he tugged at his mate through his bonds, but his vision blurred.

“Michael!” Dean caught him before he fell all the way to the ground. “Are you insane! What were you thinking?! What the _hell_ were you thinking!?”

“Had to, alpha,” Michael slurred. “They ‘ad Pete. She safe, right? Alex? He’s safe?” And then he passed out.

Cas bolted from the car before Dean had fully stopped it. He barreled forward, homing in on his mate by feel alone, and he caught her up in his arms, shushing her softly and rocking her, cradling Alex between them. “I’ve got you.”

“It was some kind of a protest, Alpha,” she told him breathlessly, eyes searching for Michael. “But it nearly turned into a riot. They were mad that Omega nurses and doctors ran the Septennial rush last week. They wanted to turn it into something awful and depraved, and they were so angry. Did you see Michael? Cas, he … I don’t know what that was, but he saved us.”

“Jody said you were trapped in the foliage when the mob showed up. April, are you hurt?”

“I’m okay, Sir. Alex was so good and quiet for me. They almost didn’t see me at all. When the man spotted me, he yanked me up by my hair. They would have hurt me, but Michael stopped them. We’re okay.”

“Cas, where…?” Dean searched with a touch to April’s back. “There’s Michael! Oh, crap!” Dean took off running, and Cas led April to follow, hardly realizing they were trailing a hapless bodyguard in their wake. Cas helped Dean lay Michael out on the pavement with his head in April’s lap, and he checked briefly that Michael wasn’t in physical distress. An EMT swooped in, drawn by the sight of Michael’s very still legs protruding from the little knot of concerned wolves. He soon summoned a gurney, and they wheeled Michael away toward a waiting ambulance.

Dean went along, but Cas hesitated, spotting the humiliated and bloodied old Alpha, cause of all the consternation. He’d been on Bobby’s radar for years, stirring dissension and peddling outrageous fables about Omegas turning bestial when allowed too much self-direction. He was dogmatic and obstinate, and if he was allowed to define the narrative that followed the wake of this afternoon, he would cast Michael’s outburst in the worst possible light for Omegas. Certainly, Michael hadn’t been rational, but neither had he been deranged. It was imperative that Castiel and Bobby control the story’s message, and that meant bottling the cult leader himself. Castiel descended aggressively, but the attending EMT placed himself between the two wolves.

April watched from several yards back. She cuddled Alex to her, and the toddler clutched her right back.

At the sight of Castiel though, Styne dropped instantly back down to his bruised knees. “Don’t kill me, Alpha. I beg you.”

Cas recoiled in disgust. “You did this! What the hell is wrong with you? Someone could have been killed!”

Styne’s mannerisms were all wrong. He groveled piteously. He looked upward and caught Castiel’s hand, beseeching pathetically. “I don’t understand, Alpha,” he whined. “It shouldn’t be possible. He had me on my knees with just a look. It’s not supposed to work that way.” He blubbered in his despair. All of his flawed and stale assumptions were broken, and he couldn’t make sense of the world.

Cas recalculated, snatching his hand free. Styne was broken. A new assault wouldn’t be coming from him, but that meant Bobby needed to hustle to identify whoever would next assume leadership. They still had a narrative to redirect. 

Castiel eyed him with contempt and suspicion. “If you truly wish to understand, we can show you. I’ve heard your offensive diatribes. I’ve been dealing with people like you my whole life,” he snarled. “You assume that every strength acquired by someone you don’t know is a strength ripped from you and yours. Your disgusting beliefs can’t stand up to the light of day, so you surround yourselves with darkness and mutter fear into each other’s ears. You long to mean something lasting, but you live a life so small, you can’t even convince _yourself_ that your fantastical lies are true. You and your little ‘friends’ terrified my mate and my son! By the ancient codes, you belong to me now, Monroe Styne.”

“What are you going to do? I have a family, Alpha.”

“Don’t be absurd. I’m not going to kill you. You’re disgusting. But you owe me, and I will have recompense. You terrorized my family! Now, you can scurry on back to Shreveport if you don’t have the courage to face up to what you’ve done, but I will drag you back here when it suits me. You cannot hide from me. Or you can stand up like a human, admit you lied to these people, and join me in a tour of a place where you’ll see for yourself what’s true. And then, you will turn your propaganda machine to doing my bidding.”

“They won’t listen to me now, sir. They all witnessed me wet myself. They all heard me recant everything. I’m finished.”

“What a spineless coward you are,” Castiel observed as if studying an interesting creature. “Go away now. I have important business to attend. Go sleep your pain medication off. I expect you next Monday morning at the ACRI main foyer at eight o’clock in the morning. You have the week to recuperate and to consider. If you run, I will find you. If you mobilize against me, I will obliterate you. Don’t cross me, Styne. I’m far more frightening than Michael is, and I only talk for as long as that method continues to meet me my ends.”

“Cas, for the love of god!” Billie exclaimed as she stormed up in heels that didn’t particularly appreciate the uneven pavement. “You just take off like that! Everything’s up in the air! What the hell?”

Castiel rounded on her. He pulled her by her upper arm until they stood far enough away from his nemesis to speak without being overheard. “WHY didn’t we know about this march? My _Pack_ was here, Billie! They put their filthy _hands_ on my _mate!_ How was this rally a surprise to you? The hospital didn’t know, the police didn’t know, city officials didn’t know! People don’t organize and gather without leaving a trail! What happened? _Why didn’t you know?!”_

Billie ignored the injustice that she should have been aware of what even local law enforcement wasn’t, and she frowned. It wasn’t local law enforcement that Cas put his faith in. “I can try to find the trail by working backward, Sir, but it’s going to take some time. They’ve obviously found a new platform for organizing.”

“Then find it, beta! And shut it down! Don’t ever let something like this come to MY town without knowing about it. I hold you personally responsible!”

He left her in a huff and swooped April right up into his arms as he made his way back to his car, ignoring Styne who stood flummoxed and powerless as chaos continued to swirl around him.

“He controlled the whole crowd, Cas,” April told him in a daze after he settled her into his backseat to double check that she wasn’t hurt. He crouched in the door and touched her face. “He told them all to kneel and they did it. His voice, it echoed somehow. It seemed to come from everywhere.”

“Yes, Kitten, that’s called, _’The Voice’._ It’s an aspect of some Profound Dominants’ repertoire that we don’t utilize very often. It takes a great deal out of us, so we only use it when we must. It involves catching hold of the metaphysical aura around each wolf and funneling our energy directly inside that space. The echoes come from the way a wolf’s aura serves as a bubble for the soundwaves. The more wolves involved in the projection, the louder the reverberations.”

“I didn’t know Michael could do that,” she replied tiredly

“Papa!” Alex sniveled.

“Come here, Ace,” he urged. The pup scrambled across. Cas held the boy like he might never let go, and Alex fell nearly instantly to sleep in his embrace. He curled around his son and breathed as he rummaged through April’s mind and calmed her. “Both of you were very brave. I’m so proud. Rest now. We’ll go home in a bit.”

It didn’t take long for a police investigator to find them and request an interview. Castiel made him speak to April across her mate’s body through the rolled-down window with the door closed. Cas listened with rising tension as she described climbing into the wide ivy planter to allow Alex a closer look at the delicate purple flowers, separating enough from her security detail to be cut off as hundreds of furious cult members swept in from nowhere waving obscene and inflammatory signs, and then ducking into a dense bush with a hand over Alex’s mouth. She described the terror of watching a blond man come closer and closer, whacking at the bushes and tromping over the flowers, only to look down and meet her horrified eyes with a look of crazed triumph. He knew her on sight, she told the investigator. She could smell his wild, irrational fervor. He smelled insane, she said. She could see the imminent threat in his mad eyes. He expected to make an example of this gift The Universe had clearly dropped right underfoot for his own personal gain.

Castiel realized he was growling low in his throat, and he sucked in a calming breath and squeezed his mate in assurance.

The questions didn’t take very long. April scrutinized a few photos from the man’s phone and picked out her assailant easily. Castiel confirmed that, yes, he would be pressing charges, but he assured the cop there was no hurry in taking the alpha into custody. He wouldn’t get far. With a polite nod, the officer thanked them both, lowering his eyes in deference to the Alpha as he disappeared into the diminishing crowd.

Cas felt itchy knowing his Pack was still out there in the confusion, but he had a bead on Dean, and he knew they were safe. He wanted them all in one place though. He needed that. But he had unpleasant business to attend to first, and he couldn’t justify dragging April and Alex along for his own benefit. 

He left them under the eye of the bodyguard whose failure would not go unmarked, and Billie, whom he trusted far more, but he never lost sight of his car. Castiel checked in with the police chief, with Bobby, briefly with a news crew, although he didn’t give an interview. He did have a brief chat with a local journalist. Michael’s harangue was entirely justified, he told her, not the ravings of an unstable psychopath. They’d captured Michael’s rant with their camera, had made it in time to get the whole thing on tape. Having a news crew capture what had undoubtedly also been recorded by countless phone cameras would add weight to the ineffable power Michael wielded here today. Viewers would be able to watch from multiple perspectives, from close up, from far back, from either side… They would be able to see for themselves that Michael had stood his ground alone up there on the makeshift dais, no one’s puppet, not propped up by the essence of any alpha, and they would be able to watch for themselves as he commanded the leader of the most violent opposition faction countering Castiel’s movement onto his knees with only a hard look and a pointing finger.

Moving on, Cas found Jody and thanked her for keeping him updated as he and Dean rushed across town. He thanked her for her efforts to protect his family, even if those efforts proved ineffective. Michael wasn’t going to be kenneled so easily. It wasn’t Jody’s fault she was as susceptible to Michael’s wolf as the protesters were. Cas finished off his rounds at the back of the ambulance where Michael’s checkup was concluding. They’d kept him seated in the ambulance for monitoring, but other than weariness and a stunned mind, he wasn’t hurt. The Omega sat dazed but awake in the open back door, numbly allowing a doctor to look him over while Dean squatted behind him with both hands underneath his shirt, palms pressed flat against his clammy skin. Dean’s face was pale, his jaw set in a grim and rigid line, a vein pulsing at his throat.

“Are you all right?” Cas asked Michael simply.

“Shaky,” Michael replied. “Where’s Pete? She’s okay…?”

“Have you given your statement to the police?” Castiel diverted bluntly.

“Yes, sir,” Michael said quietly, dully, quite obviously still in shock.

“Come to the car once you’ve got the all clear. April and Alex are fine, Michael. We’ll get all of you home. Dean, I’ll leave you to watch over him. Keep him safe, alpha.”

Dean nodded and pressed his nose behind Michael’s ear, upset enough that he didn’t ruffle under the absurd instruction. Cas returned to his own car and slid into the backseat to wrap around his mate and watch the chaos dissipate outside in the parking lot.

There was nothing more he could do at the moment. Most of it was in Bobby’s hands right now, and Cas would only be in the way.

Through the car windows, he watched as the police funneled befuddled protesters out of their swiftly erected semi-circular barricade through a few checkpoints. Everyone willing to produce an ID and stand for a quick photo was released to go home. A number of rather militant hardliners wound up cuffed with zip ties and penned off on their own. Most of the crowd merely seemed impatient to leave. Battered signs, preposterous in their statements in light of the last hour, lay trampled on the damp pavement.

Castiel thought carefully, watching faces, reading body language. They were embarrassed in addition to having their paradigms shifted. No radical who’d not been here would believe that any Omega had the wherewithal to mount a confrontation such as Michael had just pulled off, and that would soon create dissension in their ranks as those who had felt it – felt their knees hit pavement at his word – insisted they had all been missing something in their beliefs about Omegas, that the power that sent them into genuflection was nothing like the imperative force an alpha wields. 

This was a power they’d never experienced before, totally alien in its source, but there was no denying that their instincts understood it.

After firing off several critical texts in a multitude of directions, Cas navigated through his phone in search of uploads with an arm around his mate. She watched groggily, resting her head on his shoulder. Jody’s play-by-play may have painted vivid pictures, but Cas wanted to watch it for himself, to judge if Michael’s energy translated through video at all.

Cas squashed a sense of dread. What Michael had just succeeded in doing was precisely what he was destined for… This was a good development. It crossed an impossible chasm in Castiel’s plan in one wide step. But…

It was too soon.

Michael wasn’t ready.

What was worse, Dean wasn’t ready.

But times move on their own accord sometimes and woe be to the laggard who doesn’t make the train when it puffs forward on steam from sources we do not control. Ready or not, Michael was in this now. The only way to strike at the cracking iron and turn cracks into splinters and splinters into fragments was to strike fast and hard and to offer no reprieve. Michael’s face would need to be everywhere after today, speaking and smiling, proving himself erudite and steady, not crazy, thinking on his feet, commanding in ways that could never be denied by those who had experienced it, casting doubts into the minds of those who hadn’t. But they needed to do it carefully, or they would engender a whole different cult, one that defied controlling.

Michael might house a wolf who believed himself to be god, but he wasn’t a god. He was all too human. There was a slippery slope at Michael’s toes, one that Castiel knew very well.

He needed to prove that Omegas weren’t children, weren’t maladapted for a full adult life in the abstract, in the practical, in the gritty, messy, confusing, terrifying reality of human experience. But push that message too far and too strongly, and they would lose it to the zealots. They would need to cast Michael as a man who was first and foremost, civilized.

And April, Castiel’s beloved Kitten. She had been testing her public face, dipping her toes in cold water to check her resolve, but testing was done now. What Michael would do with the voice of a scientist and the power of a leader, April would do with the grace of an artist, the vitality of youth, the glamour of the spotlight, and the nimble dexterity of fingers that danced across piano keys. These were not half-formed near-children, as the protesters insisted. They were alive and vigorous and full of power and sparkle and all the complexities that made humans so much more than the sum of their parts.

But nor were they supernatural deities with the power to supplant world orders. Cas knew the temptation of that pull – to believe oneself a savior of humanity simply because of a quirk of genetics. Michael wasn’t a messiah. Neither was Castiel, his own wolf’s pretensions notwithstanding. The razor-thin path forward traversed a ravine so steep, so wide, and so bottomless the chance of following it all the way across without stumbling was a near impossibility.

But that was their road forward.

Castiel watched as a blond middle-aged man wrapped an arm around Monroe Styne’s shoulders and helped him hobble away with a jacket tied around his waist by its sleeves. He felt his mate stiffen when they passed Cas’ car.

“That one?” he asked vaguely, gently.

“Yes, sir. He held me by my hair. He frightened Alex.”

Cas memorized his features as they looked in this moment. He knew the man already – Eldon Styne. But some moments require more than data, they elicit a singularity of detail, taken out of time altogether, a snapshot that becomes indelible, definitive. The man sensed an ominous malevolence perhaps as he helped his father depart in disgrace, for he glanced up suddenly with a gasp forming a perfect ‘O’ to his lips, and his eyes met Castiel’s.

And then he turned away, smaller. The Alpha’s eyes followed until he rounded out of sight. The police had expected Castiel to demand he be taken into custody. But Cas wanted to let the man sweat first, to question why he hadn’t been apprehended and charged with assault. Castiel wanted him jumping at shadows for a while before the mundane process of court proceedings took the wind out of his sails. Already, Castiel was busy soothing his rabid wolf with promises of vengeance, but he couldn’t allow bloodshed this time. There were too many eyes on them. There was too much at stake. Castiel refused to be that man anyway. But he could at least allow his wolf this one brief taste of just deserts. Eldon Styne wouldn’t sleep with both eyes closed for years, maybe not ever again.

Castiel blinked his vision into an unfocused distance as he thought furiously.

Michael was so nearly molded. Cas exhaled control. It was too soon. But there was no stopping momentum this powerful.

Alex reached out in his sleep and curled his plump fingers into the fabric of Castiel’s shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ask questions if you got 'em. Shout if you're confused. The second half of this chapter got split out into the next one, so some resolution is coming soon.
> 
> Also, I have comments from last chapter that I haven't replied to yet. I will. I'm chomping at the bit over some of your astute comments. Looking forward to that, but these words wouldn't wait, so I did this first.
> 
> Love you all!


	13. Monday, January 28, 2019 (Cont. 2 of 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Cas discuss the fallout around the recent 'unpleasantness', and they realize it's time for a D/S contract review.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so hard to know what to say in this space right now. For posterity, the juxtaposition of RL events with the unintentional prescience of this fic will eventually be lost. But right now, the US is battling with its own deepest flaws, with the original sin that has been embedded since its inception and made a sad mockery of the ideal that we as a nation have ever truly believed "That all [men] are created equal." I took a week or so pause before posting this chapter out of respect and solemnity and a strong desire not to ride the waves of anguish that have been so callously stoked over the last couple of weeks. This chapter and the next are about entitlement and privilege and bias more than most of my chapters. This story, while it is about me playing with kink and rolling around in the abusive side of power that isn't pretty or appropriate, is also about bias. It's a canted perspective on gender, orientation, racial, and religious assumptions that are made in the real world and how blinded we sometimes are to our own biases. I don't take that lightly at all. I'm also no expert. I welcome feedback, especially if it makes me think or helps me grow.

Dean paced furiously in the kitchen, turning every now and then to confront his mate with an accusing finger up and then pressing his lips together without saying a word and resuming his adamant pacing. His mug of tea sat forlorn and cooling by the chair he couldn’t sit still in. Michael sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, his own tea equally abandoned. April sat right up beside him, leaning into his body in a show of support, Alex on her lap. Castiel stood leaning against the wall by the bay window with his arms crossed over his chest, watching his husband fume. Dean’s ranting devolved into a series of short, punctuated statements about how daft Michael’s choices had been, and then they’d petered out altogether as he struggled to get to the point.

“Kitten, would you please take Alex upstairs?” Cas prompted calmly. The phone rang again, but no one moved to answer it. Fred was fielding their calls and organizing the glut of media requests. There was already a line of news vans growing at the gate.

“Yessir,” she obediently replied. She rose to her feet with a squeeze to Michael’s shoulder and carried the pup out. Michael watched Castiel’s eyes follow her through the arch. The tension in the Alpha’s posture spoke of a tightly reined Mating-bond. Michael considered challenging why Cas would put his mate anywhere but directly beneath his own chin after the ordeal she’d just survived, but April didn’t want him interfering in her relationship with Castiel. Michael wondered how far she might be willing to stretch that rule. He wasn’t about to stand mute if Castiel was negligent. April didn’t need to be alone right now.

Michael’s knee fidgeted beneath the table.

Dean watched her go too. His chest heaved. He very nearly vibrated in barely contained anger.

“Dean, I have class in an hour,” Michael reminded him, glancing up.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Dean spat. “Not until I get to the bottom of what the _fuck_ just happened out there. What in god’s name did you think you were doing, Omega? You were alone with thousands of hateful thugs pressing in from all sides. You should be dead, you know that? What the hell did you think you were doing?”

Michael sighed and slumped over the table, laying out on his arms in defeat, speaking into the table’s surface. “What am I supposed to say? I don’t know, alpha. It just happened. They had Pete and Alex. My mind went somewhere else, and it just happened. What did you want me to do, let them have her?”

“Oh, so instead of holding two of our Pack, you thought it would be a grand idea to give them three?” Dean shot. “What the hell, Michael? There were thousands of them, and you waltzed up there alone! _ALONE!_”

Michael flared upright and looked Dean in the eye. “I told you, Dean, it wasn’t something I made a choice about! They had Pete! They had _Alex!_ They weren’t going to play nice. They came here to create a stir, and they weren’t going to leave peacefully. It wasn’t something I sat down and planned out, but I couldn’t just stand there!”

“Don’t you shout at me,” Dean warned. “I’m not afraid of you, Omega; you or your big voice.”

Michael sighed heavily and slumped over again. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to give me _some_ indication that you’re not pathologically _stupid,_ Michael! Your chances of storming up there and not being torn to pieces were fucking miniscule. There were cops already swarming in from every direction! It wasn’t on you to mount a solo rescue when you’re unarmed, untrained, and a fucking…!” Dean stopped, scrubbing both hands through his hair.

“A fucking what, Dean? Omega? A fucking Omega? Say it.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Dean defended weakly.

“Yes it was.”

“Michael, whatever the fuck you thought to do out there had a one in ten-zillion chance of succeeding. I don’t know what you did or how you did it, but if you thought you had any chance of …”

“I stopped them from hurting my family, Dean,” Michael interrupted coldly. “And I did it with a minimum of bloodshed.” A pause to check if Dean had a rebuttal, but he didn’t. “You’re welcome,” Michael finished coldly. He shoved his chair backward and stormed out in disgust. He had better things to do than sit there and take abuse when the whole world now sat skewed on its axis. God damn Dean and his mulish refusal to look past his own fears. God damn his predictable, interminable wailing cynicism in the face of Michael’s revolutionary epiphany. They should be celebrating, but no. No, instead of praising Michael in an astounded round of joyful accolade, they were stuck indulging Dean in his anxiety-fete. Typical of an alpha to co-opt a moment of pure Omega triumph. Somehow it was always about the alphas, even when it wasn’t.

Dean took a step forward and raised a hand but then huffed and let his mate go. He turned a devastated face toward Castiel. “Cas, man, I can’t… How does he expect me to be okay with this? How are you okay with this?” Dean stretched out a beseeching hand toward the archway through which Michael had vanished.

Cas took a moment to consider the question. He could tell that his calm demeanor irked Dean no end. Dean wanted the Alpha railing as fiercely as his husband. If the wildness of Dean’s eyes meant anything, his next words might well be a suggestion to hold Castiel’s cape while the Alpha dispatched every sign-waving idiot at that march. “If your positions had been reversed, Dean, what would you have done?”

“Don’t give me that crap, man. Barging into that alone was _stupid_ and reckless. I don’t care who it was. It would’ve been stupid and reckless for you, even. And Michael’s not you. I don’t care what that was, C.J. It was _irresponsible_ to wade in there alone!”

Dean stood his ground right in the middle of the room, squared off and defensive. Cas kept his weight braced against the wall, nonthreatening.

“I didn’t ask if it was wise, Dean. I asked what you would’ve done. Let’s dispense with the false notion that you would have been as frightened if I had been in Michael’s place. We both know better. I’m asking about you. Would you have tucked into a safe place and waited for the police to mount a rescue? They had her by the hair up in front of a mob whose communal self-control was waning rapidly. I’m not saying Michael’s actions are justifiable. I’m saying he likely couldn’t have helped himself any more than you or I would have done.”

Dean stared at his husband with his mouth agape, stunned. Wheels spun furiously in his head.

“Did you set him up for this, Alpha?” Dean blinked at the rush of adrenalin that followed words he didn’t want to believe could be true.

Cas rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous…”

“’Cause I really can’t tell anymore where you draw your lines,” Dean continued.

Castiel lowered his chin. “Dean, stop. Stop letting your imagination run away with you. I know today’s events frightened you…”

“Why aren’t you freaked out?” Dean argued. “How can you be calm? They had _your_ mate and son up there in front of a mob whose ‘communal self-control was waning rapidly’. Why aren’t you a slavering, drooling, vengeful mess right now? You wanna convince me that you didn’t orchestrate any part of this…? Then get back out there and shed some goddamn blood!”

Cas stepped off the wall, holding Dean’s eyes with his own, shifting to crimson, and without saying a word, he cracked open the vault he carried inside his soul where his vengeful impulses got unceremoniously stuffed, and his jaw twitched with barely contained rage. Dean’s face paled at the glimpse, and he frowned.

“Then how the fuck are you defending Michael?” Dean challenged, meeting fury with fury. “We could’ve lost all three of them! Or is _your_ mate the only one who matters?”

Cas shuttered his vault again, resumed a dispassionate expression, and consciously shifted his eyes back to blue. He reached Dean and wrapped the man up in his arms. “You know that’s not true, love. You know I had no hand in orchestrating anything. You’re frightened, and you’re lashing out, and we can work through that. I know it’ll take some time to process what Michael’s just done. But, Dean, whether we’re comfortable with it or not, what he achieved is momentous. Please don’t take this away from him.”

Dean sniffled, his body trembling as his shock began to shift from immediacy to aftershocks. “I can’t lose him, Cas. I can’t…”

“Shh. I know, baby. We’re not going to lose him. Don’t you see? Michael has proven he’s got enough strength to stand his ground against attacks that should level an Omega. He pulled from the deepest well of power, and he did it purely on instinct. He’s armored in a way you and I can’t even imagine. That wasn’t alpha-strength, Dean. It was Omega, and because Michael is a Profound Dominant to boot, he has the stature within him not merely to touch that power, but to wield it; a power that other Omegas can only bask in, that alphas cannot sense at all.”

Dean fell still, listening. Then he snaked his arms around Cas’ waist and pressed his forehead into the Alpha’s shoulder, right over the vanished bite-mark he’d left there long ago.

“Did you know he could do that?” Dean asked carefully. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know the answer.

“No, Dean. I anticipated that he might have ‘The Voice’, but I didn’t know for sure. Even with a Profound Dominant’s access to handling auras from a distance like that, I never dreamed he would be able to command enemy combatants to their knees by himself. Dean, that’s the stuff of legend. He’s a… myth, brought to life.” Awe flavored Castiel’s tone, he realized too late.

Dean pulled away, incensed. “He may be your myth, but he’s _my_ mate! He’s a mother to our children! He’s family! Your wheels are turning mighty fast there, Alpha. What have you got planned? We’re not going to sacrifice him to your war, Castiel James!”

“No,” Cas defended, resolute. “No, we’re not. He needs to learn to control this exquisite gift for defensive – only for defensive – purposes. Exercising ‘The Voice’ is an exhausting experience. Michael will likely be woozy for the next couple of days. Dean, please believe me, I’m not planning use him as a weapon, quite the opposite, in fact.”

“So, you do have a plan,” Dean astutely surmised. “Michael flared up with surprise wings and a halo not two hours ago, and you already have a plan.” The accusation snapped out like the sting of a whip.

“It’s the same plan we’ve always had, my love. Nothing’s changed.”

“Maybe you could remind me.” There was no mistaking the cautionary tone. “Considering that when we made that plan, we didn’t know Michael existed.”

Cas sighed tiredly. “I’m not planning an undercut, Dean. But you know as well as I do that Michael is destined to play a role in our crusade.”

_”Your_ crusade.”

_”OUR_ crusade,” Cas corrected adamantly. “First we had to stabilize the Omegas so they aren’t constantly hobbled by their own biology. After that, the plan was, and is, and always has been, to open a channel of some sort that allows the world to see what stabilized Omegas are capable of becoming. Some Omegas – and don’t throw a revisionist view at me; you’ve always known this phase was coming – some of them will live exceptional lives, reach for higher accomplishments, search out the spotlight. What’s on the horizon for Michael is no more or less than what _he_ strives to achieve. I’m not forcing anything on him. He is his own man, Dean Michael. It’s not on you or me to deny him the right to be who he is. And he is exceptional.”

“How very fortunate that who he is jibes so beautifully with what you want from him,” Dean answered caustically back. “And that it just happens to put him into situations where he’s more, not less, likely to need to defend himself with this miraculous talent you’re both so in love with.”

“You’re the Universist,” Cas retorted, losing his fight to hold the high ground for the moment. “Isn’t this ‘Perfect Balance’? Where else would Michael’s strength be succored instead of strangled? Where, but in _this_ Pack? I’m not directing him. He’s doing that for himself. But just like I have done for you, I will offer him a route to make use of the fire in his belly… Not as a weapon or a puppet, Dean, as a crusader. He was put on this planet for this task, and you know that. He’s no one’s tool. He is the wielder of whatever tools we can armor him to carry – just as you are, just as I am. Deny him his birthright, and you’ve shackled him as surely as his father did. Don’t buy in to the argument that enslaves Omegas. We cannot bow to fear, not even well-founded fears, not even when it’s our family in the crosshairs. If I’m allowed to fight, if you are, then Michael is too.”

“You’re an asshole, Castiel,” Dean told him bluntly. “All that matters is how he can be useful. I can’t look at you right now.” Dean turned to leave, but Cas laid a hand on his shoulder.

“This is bigger than all of us…”

Dean spun on his heel, his face red. “And isn’t that just the most convenient thing in the world for you? What’s next, C.J.? Doll him up in a tailored suit and teach him how to seduce a camera the way you taught me? Is there _anyone_ you won’t use if it gets you what you want?”

“No,” Cas answered starkly.

Dean’s nostrils flared. His jaw twitched as he looked away, fuming.

“Because what I want is equity and hope for all of us. I can’t fight fairly. I’ll lose if I do. Feel free to step out of the limelight whenever you like, Dean. I didn’t coerce you to join. You begged me to bring you in. I don’t use people who don’t want in. I don’t _make_ anyone play this game.”

“Tell that to Max,” Dean spit.

Cas bit back an angry retort, calming himself with great effort. “Max has a warrior’s spirit,” he defended quietly. “Look, we could shield them all, and if that was the right thing to do, that’s where our focus would be. But it’s not. If it was, you and I would have been waving signs right next to those thugs at the hospital. All they really want is for Omegas to stop dying in their own sweat, just like we do. They’re mistaken about how to achieve that, and they’re irrationally frightened of Omegas wielding power, but their base aims are the same kneejerk protectionism you’re feeling right now, Dean. And I am not happy about what happened today. Not at all. I swore to April and Michael both that no one could ever touch them, and I failed spectacularly in protecting them both. But you know damn well that we have no choice but to use the momentum Michael started or years of work will have been for nothing. That mob represents the largest, loudest faction standing against us, and he broke it with no more than a few words, a well-landed punch, and a power that no one, not even you, knew he had access to. I’m not proud of the fact that my next move will be to make sure Michael presents himself as human to the world. I get how skeevy that is. But, Dean, that is what will happen next, whether you appreciate the necessity or not. What Michael did…it’ll take us years to unwind it. It shouldn’t have been possible, and yet he did it.”

“We’re all just puzzle pieces to you, aren’t we?” Dean asked in dismay.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cas impatiently denied. “Perhaps you need to take some time, get a little distance and process what Michael pulled off.”

“Maybe so,” Dean agreed coldly. “And maybe you need a little _less_ distance, go look at it up close, so you can actually _feel_ what our mates went through instead of just plugging it into your calculator brain and milking everything you can out of him.”

“That’s not fair,” Cas protested.

“Why did you send April off?” Dean pivoted. “Why aren’t you comforting your mate, Castiel? She just faced down a mob and a personal, physical attack with her son in her arms, and you’re down here smack-talking with me. You can’t take an hour off to spend consoling your mate after a horrifying trauma because you can’t lose valuable implementation time? Your mind is skipping ahead setting plans in place and figuring out what your assets and liabilities are. That’s the real reason you’re so dead-set on finding more O/D’s, isn’t it? So you can fill out the ranks of your little Omega army? So you can man it with cannon fodder that will turn the tide of popular opinion?” Dean’s eyes reddened.

“Are you finished?”

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” Cas replied coolly.

“Dignify your ugly plot…?”

_”Dignify_ that you just casually suggested it would be better to continue to allow Omega-Dominants to die in adolescence so they don’t get pulled into a war of someone else’s making, a war that wins them the right to exist on their own terms!” Cas shot back.

Dean crossed his arms, openly, brazenly defiant. Furious. Aching.

“Look,” Cas tried again, deliberately lowering his tension. “You’re angry, and I don’t blame you. I’m angry too. I want to rip their throats out with my teeth, but that won’t help us in the long run, any more than turning on each other will; any more than making unfounded accusations. What will help is to shock the world with the revolutionary concept that an Omega-Dominant can assume a form of power heretofore known only in stories and defend himself and his family against an angry mob, and that that same Omega-Dominant is also a rational, well-spoken human being, not an unbridled beast. If we _don’t_ answer this moment with a firm declaration that Michael’s power is not an aberration but the natural order, and that he is as human as the rest of us… Dean, we must move fast or we will lose this war! The last thing we can allow to happen now, for Michael’s own safety – for ALL of their safety – would be to tuck him away inside the house as if he’s dangerous. Don’t you see? We don’t have a choice!”

“It’s amazingly coincidental that every time we find ourselves backed into a corner, it leaves us with no option but the direction you most wanted to go in all along,” Dean told his husband acerbically. “You’ll pardon me for saying that seems mighty fortunate for you.”

Castiel couldn’t remain stoic as Dean’s resentment melted his reserve. His eyes reddened to match Dean’s, and his jaw set stubbornly. “What is it that you believe I’ve done, Dean? Do you think I orchestrated a riot outside the hospital where our mates and our son spent the afternoon? You think I lured those crazies here, stuck an incompetent bodyguard on duty, and then allowed my mate to wander around in the parking lot while a mob descended, hoping that Michael would turn out to be the first Omega in recorded history with powers of compulsion?”

“Of course not!” Dean snapped.

“Then what? What exactly is convenient about any of this for me?”

“When did you know?” Dean asked.

“When did I know what?” Cas countered, short in his frustration. “I found out about the mob when you did.”

“When did you know that Michael had access to the well at the center of the metaphysical core?” Dean asked, enunciating carefully.

“What are you accusing me of, love? Of grooming your mate toward an emotional explosion so that he would best fit my plans for him?”

“Did you? You’ve been grinding your heel into his back for months now.” Dean’s tension level choked the air in the kitchen, enough to give away that at least half of his emotional overflow was about fear, about leftover shock at having seen his mate pass out after taking on an angry mob singlehandedly. Cas knew that, but he couldn’t stand passive in the heat of Dean’s accusations. Allegations like this didn’t come from nowhere.

“Dean, I had no idea that Michael is capable of that kind of compulsion until we both found out through Jody over the phone. I was as stunned and alarmed as you were.” Cas kept his distance, but his body language spoke a desire to close the uncomfortable space.

“You haven’t been grooming him the way you did Max?”

Castiel’s jaw clenched in anger. A vein throbbed at his temple. He snapped out his answer in staccato, accented snaps. “I’ve groomed him diligently, every step of the way. I’ve tutored him exhaustively to be a dependable Dom for you and to control his wolf’s destructive impulses. That’s never been a secret. I’ve reinforced hierarchical strata when his Omega designation showed signs of insecurity. I’ve guided him toward making a full commitment to his chosen field, and yes, I’ve watched him for indications that a position in the vanguard of our fight to humanize all Omegas would suit him without forcing him to fit where he doesn’t. I’ve _never_ kept that a secret from you! Nor did I keep secret that I planned to trail chum in the water for the new Omega contractor recruits to chew on. You’re not a simpleton, Dean. You could see every indication from Max that I did, but you made it clear to me – more than once, I might add – that singling out the right Omega for the planning committee was my job, not yours, so I didn’t discuss with you what you didn’t want to participate in.”

“All right, fine!” Dean waved off logic he was in no mood to untangle. “Then how do you explain how quickly you turned a hostage situation involving both our mates and our son into a pivotal new direction for _your_ war? Nobody moves that fast, C.J.”

“We _must_ move that fast. We don’t have a choice if we want to win the war.” Cas repeated tiredly, stepping back up to beseech Dean. “I had a very good teacher, myself. He taught me to seize the moment. He taught me the hard way to plan for the unlikely and to be prepared to come out swinging when we’ve been caught off-guard. He showed me the consequences of taking the slow road.”

Dean allowed Cas to pull him in. Pain etched Dean’s face as he searched Castiel’s. “He’s not ready, Alpha,” Dean told him in a strangled voice.

“I know,” Cas agreed. “But he’s older than you and I were when we took the mantle.”

“Just this morning,” Dean explained. “He and April got into a tiff over how creepy Michael’s savior complex is when he’s hovering over Kate. He’s still figuring himself out, man. He’s not ready to play media games. He’s not as polished as he needs to be. They’ll eat him alive.”

Cas chuckled sadly, sloughing off the tension, easing his shoulders. “So that’s what she was irritated about. Maybe offering Michael another venue for his savior complex will keep him from needing to fulfill it at home.”

“Oh, _that’s_ a terrific idea,” Dean huffed sarcastically. “You wanna feed his narcissism? He’s got a big enough head already.”

Cas tilted Dean’s head with a hand at his chin and kissed him sweetly. “Well, he can at least put it use right now while April is shaken. She wants nothing to do with me at the moment. How’s that for convenient?” Cas scowled at his own whiny stream of consciousness. “Dean, I know you’re scared. I know you’re angry. I would not have chosen this timing or this outcome. But what’s happened, as disturbing as it is, is a gift, and we cannot ignore it. I need you to stop running through endless ‘what if’s’ and focus on the magnificence that is your mate. Look what he did! With no firearms, no serious injuries, no D.F’s, and no hesitation whatsoever, he halted a riot and rescued two people from certain torture, two people he loves with his very soul. He turned the tide of a movement that had been gaining steam for five years, leaving it broken and rudderless. He stood toe-to-toe with a sea of Alpha-Dominants and proved that he holds more presence in his bearing than any of them, even cumulatively. And this was not a laboratory setting. None of those people were obligated to comply for evaluative purposes. They knelt to Michael because he _made_ them kneel. _This_ is why evolution gave us Dominance in the first place: to empower Pack leaders to redirect a population that’s lost its way.”

“Thought that was why we have alphas,” Dean countered, just to be argumentative.

“Alphas can lose their way too, love. Who’s going to redirect people who’ve grown too powerful for their own brakes? They accosted a defenseless woman and a child. It doesn’t get much further out of balance than that.”

“You’re saying that Lupins developed Profound Dominants who’re also Omega as the final check on runaway powermongers?”

“I don’t know yet, but it’s a reasonable guess, considering,” Cas huffed impatiently back. “It fits the mythology better than assuming only alphas can hold the moral compass.”

“I don’t get you, Alpha,” Dean told him, honestly baffled. “What’s got in to you? Who are you, and what’ve you done with my Alpha? How the hell are you this collected?” Dean held him with a beady eye, studying the unflappable man who seemed to grow a little flapped under the scrutiny. “You’ve always been half calculator and half rabid boar. Where’s the boar? You’re going after him, aren’t you?”

“Who?” Cas asked, turning to the sink for a glass of water.

“Styne,” Dean clarified simply.

“No, I’m not,” Cas denied. “I told you. That would be counterproductive. I’m going to shove his face in the mess he’s made of society. His credibility may be shot with the hardliners, but converting him fully to our mission and putting him to work offsetting the damage he’s done will sway some of the less devout.”

“Okay,” Dean prompted. “Maybe not Monroe. What about the younger one? His son? The one whose hand touched April’s head?” Dean evoked the imagery on purpose. He needed to see Castiel’s true response.

“Eldon,” Castiel said in a dead, cold voice.

Dean shivered. “Yeah. Him. He assaulted your mate, Alpha. He wasn’t planning to treat her to a nice massage and tuck her in warm and cozy. You’re too calm, C.J. You just let me go off on you without batting me back down, and we’re too close to this thing for you to have this kind of control while he’s still walking and breathing. Unless… Who’s got him, Bobby or Billie?”

“Neither,” Cas answered, growing annoyed. “Dean, much as it pains me, we can’t touch him. In fact, Bobby’s sent out a detail to protect him. I think Ash is leading this one because he’s the best stealth stalker we have. If anything happens to Eldon when the entire world knows he assaulted my mate, we’re cooked. I’m filing assault charges, and I mean to make them stick, but I’m doing it all above board.”

Dean gaped at him; he swallowed. Cas sighed in response. “I know, Dean. I’m struggling. But it has to be this way. Traditional Pack vengeance would be just as damaging to our mission as sequestering Michael in the house.”

“Then how the fuck are you standing here talking about it like it’s the weather?”

Castiel licked his lips. “Lucky timing,” he replied with a shrug.

“Come again?” Dean’s skepticism hadn’t waned.

Cas pursed his lips. “I’ve been following a course of disciplinary meditations three times a day over the past week. Plus, a careful examination of my alpha and my wolf had me primed to catch them both before they… I … rushed off half-cocked. I’ve had their leashes wound tight around my fists ever since you questioned why I let you accompany me to the hospital at the Septennial. Neither of my designations has had any slack for days. I won’t pretend that wasn’t convenient. I believe Eldon Styne is alive this evening because _you_ alerted me that I needed to regain control of myself.”

Dean stared at his husband.

“Today was terrifying,” Cas admitted. “For all of us. But we cannot allow fear or rage to rule us. I am not going to exact vengeance, no matter how badly I want to, even if the judicial system fails me. And you’re not going to deny Michael his destiny, no matter how frightening it is for you or how convenient it is for me. If you do that, Dean…”

“I know, I know, I’m no worse than the asshats who lock their Omegas in the basement,” Dean sputtered. He sank down into his chair at the table and sipped his tea before sputtering and spitting it back out. “Gross. It’s bad enough when it’s hot.”

Cas pulled Michael’s chair up beside Dean, took both cups and shoved them out of the way and then took both of Dean’s hands in his. “I need you to trust me, alpha,” he pleaded. “I can see where this path is taking us. Dean, I can see it. Please, trust me.”

Dean lifted Cas’ left hand and pressed his husband’s knuckle to his lips. He closed his eyes. “What the fuck happened out there, Cas? What is my mate? What did he turn into? Why haven’t we ever seen him do that before?”

“He needed the right motivation, I suppose,” Castiel answered with a squeeze to Dean’s hand.

“Don’t tell me he hasn’t had motivation… You nearly throttled him a time or two.”

“It wouldn’t work on me, Dean,” Cas reminded him. “I’m stronger than his compulsion.”

Dean regrouped, shaking his head. “He let Jody put a rope corset on him, Cas. He’s a nineteen. That’s not just a number. It makes sense, right, that he’s brushing shoulders with the clouds and the angels and god and the crew, but that doesn’t explain why he would submit to any authority but yours, not when he can do _that_.” Dean shook his head in wonder. “None of this makes a lick of sense.”

“He’s Omega,” Cas noted, as if that explained everything. Then he added, “And he’s also human, Dean. He loves you. He honors your authority because he’s far more than just his wolf. His Secondary needs boundaries. You built him the stability that he craves, and he knows that it’s good for him. He honors Jody’s authority because he values the access she grants him to what he wants to accomplish with his life. Don’t miss the fact that in all the time we’ve known him, Michael has had this talent within him, and he only brought it forth in defense of the lives of his Pack. He regulated his rage even as he wielded that power for the very first time. He didn’t hurt anyone – more than was reasonable. That speaks to who he is at his core.”

“He didn’t know he could do that, C.J.,” Dean argued. “Don’t go giving his restraint all the credit. He was probably as shocked as the crowd was.”

“Possibly,” Cas acknowledged. “But it proves that he has enough emotional control not to lose himself even in the midst of the direst incidents. That’s more restraint than I showed at his age. He’s been through some rough times, but it wasn’t until today that he reached his limit. Think about that.”

“All he talked about in the ambulance was wanting to find April and Alex, make sure they were all right. He needed to touch them to be sure. He didn’t care about himself at all even though he couldn’t even stand for about twenty minutes.” Dean’s voice faded into a musing whisper.

“He’s a good man, Dean Michael. You Mated a good man. He’s so much like you in some ways…”

“I’m the handsome one though, right?” Dean quirked an eye up to check Cas’ reaction, and the man smiled affectionately. All the fight faded between them, insufficient to stand against the simple touch of hands.

“Perhaps I’m biased,” Cas replied warmly. Dean softened at the look in Castiel’s ocean blue eyes. He leaned in and kissed the Alpha, pressing faith and gratitude into Cas’ skin.

“You promise to take care of him out there?” Dean begged. “Cas, promise me. Not with useless security guards. I mean really watch over him. Don’t let him become someone he’s not, C.J. This could go straight to his head. If I lose him to his own delusions of grandeur, you’re going fly up there and bring him home!” Dean sniffed with his head bowed and his face pressed close to Castiel’s.

“Trust me, love. I won’t let anything change him that’s not right for Michael. You have my word. I had to find the way through a domineering adolescent wolf on my own. I’m not going to make Michael do that.”

“Am I in trouble for shooting my mouth off just now? I said some…things. Unfair things. Disrespectful things. I’m sorr…”

Castiel set a finger over Dean’s lips and halted him.

“Dean, look up at me, please.” Dean glanced up and then licked his lips, straightened his shirt, swallowed uncomfortably, and sat up in his chair. He expected to hear lecture number seventeen, the one about ‘It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it’. But Cas smiled and cradled his jaw and cheek, stretching two fingers up into the short hair behind his ear.

“I know that our union isn’t a standard marriage,” he explained gently. “I know that you need me to hold you accountable for your bad behavior and to help you manage outpourings of emotion that overflow your capacity to funnel them constructively. But I never want you to feel that you can’t be completely honest with me. I can’t imagine being married to you without standing in the fearsome winds of your temper every now and then. You and I, we work best when we aren’t afraid to speak what needs speaking. And I think you needed to say everything you said. You’re not in trouble, sweetheart. At least, not more than you already were. I do wish you weren’t in the cage right now. We could both use a reconnect.” And there was that tone that turned Dean sloppy.

“Sir, I’m pretty sure I recall calling you an asshole. You gonna let that fly? You could, uh, move tomorrow morning’s swats up if you want, up to this evening?” Dean suggested hopefully.

Cas raised his brow. “Oh, really?” he huffed. “Every day isn’t enough for you?”

“Well, I mean,” Dean sputtered. “You kind of blew the finale on my birthday. Since then they’ve been almost boring, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Castiel laughed and pulled Dean in closer. “I love you, baby, even when you’re insufferable.” He chuckled softly for a moment and then realized that Dean was awfully still in his arms. He released the man and sat back. “What is it?”

Dean frowned slightly. “My birthday,” he said hesitantly.

“Your birthday,” Cas repeated.

“Honesty, right?”

“Please, Dean. I can’t fix what I don’t know is broken.”

“Yeah, on my birthday. The apes, man. The guards. That was…felt like that was out of bounds. I mean, I know it was a punishment, and I know I greenlighted apes and strangers and showing off and public humiliations. I know all that. But… felt like a step too far, that’s all. It’s your call though. I deserve whatever. I’m not mad. But I figured you need to know where that landed me. You’re always going on and on about me telling you every last thing I feel. It set me way back. That’s all.”

Cas nodded and took Dean’s hands in his, hunching in close. “I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t expect them to masturbate in the window. It went further than I intended. But if they’d stayed in the cart as I had planned and served only as an audience, would you have been disturbed?”

“I dunno,” Dean admitted. “They were pricks, even the ones who kept their zippers up.”

“It’s critical that we go through the incident and figure out where it went off for you. And to be clear, that wasn’t your punishment. That was status and ritual. Your punishment didn’t begin until the next morning.”

“Whatever,” Dean dismissed. “Last year we didn’t do it at all. We never did it when we were scene partners. This year I got a triple count. But go ahead and say it wasn’t a punishment.”

Cas sat silently while Dean fidgeted. The Alpha was clearly taking his partner’s words to heart, thinking, assessing, tracing back through his own motivations as he was wont to do in the face of any accusation of overreach. After a pause, Castiel stood up and offered his hand to Dean.

“Come with me.”

“What? Where?”

“If you’re finished accusing me of loading Michael into my cannon, if your fears are somewhat mollified for the moment and you’re ready for a change of topic, let’s go. We need a contract review. We’ve had a misstep. Let’s go. I can’t alleviate all your worries, beloved, but we can fix this.”

Dean’s body slumped and his head rolled back. “C’mon, Cas, we don’t need a contract review. This isn’t rocket science.”

“On your feet, Winchester. No whining. We’re doing this. I don’t plan to go over the entire contract, just the sections that are pertinent to that scene.”

Dean grumbled but took his husband’s proffered hand and followed him to Castiel’s office. Cas rolled his chair back and sat before pulling Dean down to straddle his legs with his back to the Alpha’s chest so they both faced the screen.

Dean let a small grunt slip as he plopped onto Castiel’s thighs. Cas graciously ignored the pained sound. He activated his screen with his arms wending around his husband’s body and his chin propped on Dean’s right shoulder. Cas could feel Dean begin the slow spin toward a spiral. Focusing together on their scaffolds would help ground the man before he lost himself to the whirl. Dean sighed but focused on the screen as a document appeared; a very long document with a multitude of comments in the margins, highlighted text sprinkled throughout, bold-type initials in key spots.

Cas navigated to a section he felt was relevant, and he highlighted a portion of the text. He read aloud.

_”The Submissive authorizes the Dominant to plan and implement scenes without the Submissive’s prior knowledge provided all elements of said scene are pulled from the Submissive’s ‘Green List’ and the timing of implementation heeds the Submissive’s professional and personal time constraints.”_

Dean nodded, engaging in the discussion.

“It wasn’t the surprise factor, Cas. I have no problem with that. You know I’m good with being hauled over whenever you want me.”

“All right,” Cas agreed, leaving the highlighted portion alone and scrolling deeper into the contract. “Let’s review the Green List, then.”

He found the segment that listed in exhaustive detail everything Dean had agreed Cas could do to him without a scene discussion. It wasn’t short. Dean shifted his weight forward, wrapping his lower legs outside of Cas’ shins and tucking his feet behind Cas’ ankles as an anchor. He took the mouse from Cas and skimmed as he scrolled through the list, pausing at relevant items.

He lingered over, _’Impact-play of level 15-J or lower’._ He licked his lips. Behind him, Cas waited.

“Yeah, I’m still good with that,” Dean decided. “It wasn’t the intensity.”

“All right,” Cas affirmed. “Keep going. The surprise and the count were acceptable. What about the audience? What was it specifically that felt alarming?”

Dean scrolled down, down to the newest entries at the bottom of the list. He rubbed a hand across his face and grimaced, reading his own Green List.

_’Non-participatory third party voyeurs of the Dominant’s choosing’_

_’Humiliating circumstances and speech, provided they don’t affect the Submissive’s professional or social standing outside of the scene’_

_’Public displays of Submission either for disciplinary or recreational purposes, provided there is a reasonable effort made to shield primate minors or inappropriate audience members from unwitting nonconsensual viewing’_

Dean chewed his thumbnail thoughtfully as he read and re-read passages in his list.

“They weren’t non-participatory,” he commented. “That wasn’t just voyeurism, C.J.”

“I agree,” the Dom commented soothingly. “It was meant to be, but I failed to communicate appropriately with them. I failed to account for the fact that Primates don’t think the way we do. A wolf would have known better, but I didn’t realize their actions bothered you. I’m sorry, Dean. That was my fault. Is there anything else?”

Dean continued working his thumbnail over, reading his own words on the page where they laid out all his substantial predilections. It was a road map to a profoundly submissive mindset, and Dean’s mouth watered a little in reading through it.

_’The Submissive retains the right to halt all recreational activities through the use of a pre-selected safeword, even should the scene in question adhere entirely to items enumerated in the Green List’_

Dean leaned back into his husband’s chest. “I could’ve safeworded.”

“You believed it was a punishment scene. Safewords aren’t permitted during punishments.”

“I mean, you did say that it was my application to foster Kate that earned me that scene,” Dean craned his head to seek Castiel’s face. “Kind of a gray area, I guess? Birthday spankings are usually for fun, but your wolf was obviously making a point, man. That was no playful message. It was about blindsides. I get that. And I get how I worded the Green List. I think it was just that they were apes, Alpha. In that moment, what hit me was that I had no idea what they might do. I can’t trust apes the way I do wolves.”

“Even though there was a wall of glass between you? You never mentioned having a higher sensitivity to Primates than wolves. I assumed that the glass would feel protective enough to account for their proximity and unpredictability. But it wasn’t enough, was it? Even knowing they couldn’t touch you.” Castiel posed. “Even knowing I was right there watching out for you?”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed. “The glass didn’t feel like a boundary at all. I felt… vulnerable, I guess is the best word. What makes this Green List work for me is the certainty that you and I both know how each element is going to unfold. I trust you to control the wild cards. But apes aren’t controllable, and it scared me.”

Cas wrapped an arm around Dean’s middle and kissed his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Dean. I misunderstood and I miscommunicated. I won’t let that happen again. Thank you for explaining it to me. I want you to work some phrasing into your Green List that clarifies to what extent Primate witnesses can be allowed in our public scenes. If we need to alter the wording to prohibit them altogether, I have no problem with that. We will restrict such scenes to Lupin-only spaces like our Facility, our home – with the drapes closed – or a dogpark.”

Dean nodded and pressed the side of his head into Castiel’s. “I left it too vague,” he observed. “It’s too new. I didn’t think it all the way through when I added those last lines.”

“Dean, this is my fault primarily, not yours. I am not unaware of your sensitivities during impact scenes in regard to witnesses. No matter how the list is phrased, I shouldn’t have added apes to a scene we didn’t choreograph together, not until we’ve played in their presence often enough to be sure how we’re both going to react.”

“I should’ve called ‘Red’,” Dean added. “Even if it was punishment and not play, you would have listened to me. But it never even crossed my mind.”

“I don’t take safewords lightly, Dean. I wish you would believe that. This cavalier abdication of yours, this refusal to engage in your own safety is dangerous.”

“I _told_ you right then that I was freaked out,” Dean countered.

“Without a safeword, your complaints are no stop-action. How many times have you bitched and moaned at me during a scene, only to melt in my arms in satisfaction afterward?”

Dean dropped his head backward onto Cas’ shoulder. He rolled it sideways into Cas’ jaw, eliciting a huff of amusement.

“Was it a punishment, man?” Dean asked. “Sure felt like one.”

Cas stared at the screen and the blinking cursor in front of him, highlighting the word, ‘Public’. He sighed. “At the time, I didn’t believe so. I wanted to drive my point home to you, love, but I had no intention of forcing you to hear it. Not right then, not exactly. I invited witnesses in order to level up the humiliation factor because I wanted you desperately turned on with no means to alleviate that need. When you ended the scene fully engorged and lustful…I guess I assumed that your complaint was window dressing.”

“Yeah, well, my cock doesn’t always listen to my insecurities,” Dean admitted. “I also ended that scene pissed the fuck off. That’s not my usual reaction to your touch.”

Cas chuckled and kissed Dean’s temple for good measure. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m not traumatized,” Dean confirmed. “Those guys in the guard house, man, I mean… It’s not new for you to use them to make sure I feel exposed. And I know they’re not random hires. You checked them all out carefully. There was no way those pricks were going to do anything but taunt me. They know the rules.”

“That’s really not the point, Dean,” Cas told him. “Some scenes, some punishments even, require no prior discussion because we know each other well enough reliably to predict the other’s reactions. Anything that has the potential to spark a reaction that neither of us expected absolutely must not happen in an ad hoc scene. Period. It is imperative that I understand your Green List, not simply as a menu of available items, but in the frame of mind that led you to add each item to the list in the first place. I cannot take that responsibility lightly, especially if you’re going to insist on leaving our safety entirely in my hands.”

“Cas, please. Having a safeword ruins the headspace for me…”

“I know that,” the Alpha huffed in frustration. “And as far as I’m able, I want to allow you your headspace. But Dean, I house a wolf who feasts on vengeance and an alpha who believes, despite all my efforts to sway him, that vengeance and justice are synonyms. In my darkest moments with you, in the heat of a scene that feeds us both, I don’t correct their impulses. I need to allow them a modicum of satisfaction in that arena, and if I can’t get that through you, then I need to find other routes. If you’re _not_ going to manage your own safety, then I must be extremely circumspect about how I feed myself through you. Whether Thursday’s scene was a punishment or not, my wolf had a point to make about…as you said, about blindsides. I felt secure in allowing that statement because I believed you and I had thoroughly hashed out the evolutions of your sensitivities to exhibitionism. But come to find out I misinterpreted significant portions of your changing development. The misinterpretations are my fault, Dean. Failure to take responsibility and use that goddamn safeword, that’s on you. I’m not a mind reader, much as you wish me to be one.”

Dean swallowed uncomfortably. It always came back to this point. Internally, his battle intensified. Cas was _never_ going to harm him, damnit! Only, hadn’t he just overstepped boldly enough to prove that declaration ridiculous? It was a mantrum repeated in Dean’s head so often, it barely held any meaning anymore. Dean fiddled with the cuticle of his thumbnail. Cas’ chin on his shoulder was warm, not heavy. There was a hand on Dean’s right hip and another tucked around his left inner thigh, pressed between Dean’s weight and Cas’ leg. Dean swallowed again.

“Take your time, baby,” Cas encouraged. “I know it’s hard.”

“I’ll change the Green List,” Dean told his husband. “Looks like I wasn’t as ready as I thought for adding exhibitionism to that part of the contract.”

Cas nodded. “Write the Green List however you feel most comfortable, Dean. That’s what it’s there for. But don’t assume that absolves you of maintaining your own boundaries. This really cannot be negotiable any longer.”

Dean sat back up and turned in Cas’ lap to face him obliquely. “No, but that’s the point, sir. If I get the Green List right, then _that’s_ my boundary markers. It’s not that I’m refusing to safeword. It’s that I put the safewords right in the list so neither of us has to think about it during a scene. It’s not an abdication, goddamnit. I got ahead of myself and greenlighted some stuff I’m not ready for. That doesn’t mean we scrap my whole headspace! It means I need to put the kibosh on these last entries. Go back to what we both know I’m comfortable with. Save the public stuff for scenes we design together.”

Castiel nodded wearily in acceptance. It was as close as he was going to get from his stubborn partner. “All right,” he acceded. “Be sure to update the list under the Punishments section as well. I need clear limits. I’m managing my own impulses in that regard just as surely as I’m managing your limits. There can be no ambiguity.”

“And then you’ll let me float?”

“I’m not wholly comfortable with knowing you refuse to consider using a safeword,” Cas told him. “I admit that mid-scene, it’s a heady rush, and I make no excuses for that. But we cannot pretend that we aren’t both aware that in the heat of an intense moment, my wolf is fully capable of dealing a killing blow inadvertently. He doesn’t know his own strength, Dean. I know you know that. It worries me that after everything you’ve witnessed from him, that you’re still willing to throw caution to the wind in order to ride a hurricane without a harness. If your birthday scene proved nothing else, it proves that that hurricane can still throw you right out of the saddle and fling you into the trees.”

Dean shook his head. “That’s not going to happen if we stick to the script.”

Cas sighed. “You are, singularly, the stubbornest man I have ever known.”

“I love you too,” Dean replied. “And I trust you, C.J.” Dean stood and re-straddled the warm lap facing his husband. “Is it all right if I apologize now…for Kate? Alpha, I really blew it, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I knew good and well you wouldn’t leave Kate dangling in the winds, but all that mattered to me was what _I_ wanted. I broke my vow of obedience, sir, and that’s not the husband I wanna be. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I act like I don’t trust you, man, because I do. If you say I need another two week chastity right after I did four days, I’m not gonna fight you. Two weeks, it is. If you wanna layer bruises on my butt on top of bruises until my ass won’t fit into my jeans for all the swelling, dude, just point me where you want me bending over. If we need to find somewhere else for Kate to recover and do her therapy, Sir, that’s in your hands. I’m sorry for everything I keep doing that undermines your leadership. I want so bad to follow you without needing to question everything. Cause I respect you, Castiel. And I trust you. I swear I do. Sometimes I need to hear you explain it for me using little words. If you say you’ve got a vision in your head of where our war needs to focus next and that you can safely take Max and Michael and the whole population of Omegas in with you, then I’ve got your back. I trust you, Castiel James. Let’s do it, man. Game on. All I ask is that you keep my mate under your wing, and that you don’t pull your swats just because you know I won’t call red when it hurts.”

“You mean that?” Cas asked him tenderly. “You trust me with your mate’s safety? You had some serious concerns about my plans and how I’ve implemented them, I believe. Those did not sound like concerns that had only just occurred to you. If your faith in my leadership is faltering… Dean, if you worry that I’ve taken too callous a view of the people I make use of for my ends…”

Dean set two fingers over Castiel’s lips, smiling softly when Cas quieted and kissed them. “You scare me sometimes, Alpha,” Dean admitted intimately, leaving very little space between their mouths, breathing Castiel’s exhales into his own lungs. “What you show me when it’s just the two of us and you let your guard down…You know I can see it all, right? I know who you are, Castiel James Novak Winchester. I know you. And you’re not as tame as you want people to think you are. I know how your mind works. I know how far ahead of the game you’re setting your game pieces. I know how wide the net you cast really is. I know you can predict where every move the enemy makes is going to land. You’re a panther in the tree, waiting on your prey, and you know every move it’s going to make before it does. But, babe, I don’t have that kind of vision. I can’t predict these things the way you do. That leaves me blind sometimes to what’s really going down, and that’s scary as fuck. You give me too much credit. You believe I’m following the same lines of reasoning you are, but I’m lost a lot of the time. All I can do is trail along behind the action, figuring it out as I go, and trusting that you knew what you were doing the whole time. So you see what it looks like? You see how baffling something like today’s mob march is to me? I’m accustomed to you predicting shit like that _before_ it happens and playing your hand with expert finesse to win the match point instead of losing to Neanderthals like those people.”

Cas nodded. “I get it, Dean. If I had seen it coming, then what happened with Michael would have been intentional game play on my part. I assure you I didn’t, and it wasn’t. I won’t risk him like that. And I won’t use him at all without his and your full acquiescence.”

Dean’s eyes glistened with intense light. “But you vaulted right off the fiasco with your sword already swinging, and you had a plan in motion before Michael even regained consciousness. How can it take you three months to decide about something like fostering Kate, but thirteen milliseconds to shift your whole battle plan around Michael? Look, babe, I trust you, okay? You say you can see from here to there, and my mate’s going to be fine. I believe you. As long as Michael’s on board, let’s kick it in the ass. Right? But can you help me see it too? Cause I’m blind. You’re a scary motherfucker when you’re on the warpath. And I’ve seen you lose it once or twice. I can’t be certain without checking in with you that your eyes haven’t rolled to the back of your head. I can’t let that happen if Michael is your fiery sword.”

Cas nodded somberly. “Dean, I’m okay. I’ve got this. I decide slowly on some things because I’m not omniscient. I’m human. Where I can, I need to think important decisions all the way through. But where our war is concerned, hesitating would be disastrous. We don’t have the luxury of belaboring every moment when time is so critical. What I need you to understand is that I’ve done all those minute calculations already, way out ahead of time. I cannot foretell every eventuality, but what I can pre-plan are general counterstrikes to all kinds of attacks the enemy might level against us. Michael and April have both been on a track headed toward lives that showcase an Omega’s potential. A violent demonstration by the Stynes has likewise been imminent for some time. We didn’t know when or where or with what ammunition. We didn’t know what they might choose for their motivation. But we knew it was coming. And we’ve planned countermoves.”

“And Michael?”

“Please believe me, love. I had no idea our mates might end up right in the middle of that. I never would’ve allowed them to go had I known. I could never have guessed Michael had the power to freeze a riot in its tracks. I certainly didn’t leave them in the hands of an inept bodyguard and a beta teacher knowing their safety was in peril.”

“You suspected he might have ‘The Voice’ though,” Dean reminded him, lowering his chin.

Cas huffed. “He’s a nineteen, Dean. I would’ve been surprised if he didn’t. Doms as low as sixteen have been logged with that talent. It’s rare, but it follows strength. We’ve seen him use muted forms of compulsion before. This is merely an extension of that. Michael’s never accessed it fully before today though. I had no intention of building plans around him and whatever talents he may turn out to possess. I’m not using him as a weapon. I’m using him to prove the heights that Omegas are capable of reaching when they aren’t left drowning in their own secretions. The correlation of events is serendipitous. Both tracks, our mates’ peaking prowess within their chosen fields and the cultists’ descent into violent demonstration, were approaching their apices independent of each other. I didn’t choreograph this. Michael’s an anomaly, but we can turn that to our advantage if we do it now. Dean, please. I need you to understand this. Do you trust me? Do you really?”

Green eyes bored into blue, and Cas opened himself up to the assessment.

Cas held his husband by the shoulders and pressed his case. “He wants this, Dean. I didn’t plant that in him. I recognized the spark, and I fed the fire, but I didn’t kindle it. He wants to do this. Dean, he needs to do this. It’s unfortunate that it’s coming to a head while he’s still got so much maturing to do, but you and I can help him with that.”

Dean nodded, reluctantly finding himself without any more arguments. He couldn’t argue Cas was using Michael inappropriately when Michael was desperate to be useful. It was no different, really, from the way Cas helped hand Dean into the fray all those years ago.

“Does it make sense to you now?” Cas checked.

“Yeah, Alpha. I said I trust you, and I meant it. Sorry about going off on you back there. That was, um, pretty disrespectful of me.”

Cas laughed softly. “I think we can give this one a pass considering you’re already in sufficiently hot water at the moment.”

“Oh, my, how very generous my Sir is all of a sudden,” Dean teased as he captured Castiel’s lips.

Cas chuckled, kissing back. He broke the kiss, turning his head a little. “Dean, if I don’t correct you for your tone earlier, am I going to have a brat provocation to smack down later?”

“Who, me?” Dean asked innocently. His eyes glittered playfully. Crow’s feet decorated his affectionate gaze as it shifted into something reverent. Cas was entranced as always. This was the man he married, the alpha who’d won his heart. Dean sat astride his lap, thumb caressing Castiel’s jaw, green eyes sparkling with adoration, a smattering of golden freckles across his nose, a mature if complicated man who knew his own mind and who breathed life into everything he touched. And his eyes, as he focused them on Castiel, held reverence. All Castiel could do was pray he reflected back to his love everything Dean’s forest green eyes spoke between them. How backward the world had become.

“Come here,” Cas whispered, tugging Dean back in and kissing him deeply. Reconnecting after an argument felt like coming back home to Cas, even if he was restricted to keep things chaste for now. He didn’t let it go too long. He pulled back again with a smacking sound, smiling into Dean’s warm acceptance. “Edit the contract for me, Pet,” Cas instructed. “And send the changes to me for review. We’ll sit down and go through them thoroughly. What happened on your birthday can’t happen again. Right now, we need to speak with our mates and prepare Michael to face the media. After that, let’s take the pups and let our mates have some alone time. I can’t speak for Michael, but I feel April needing reassurance that Michael’s unharmed. That will likely sink in better if they’re both naked than if they’re surrounded by infants.”

“Good idea,” Dean agreed stumbling backward to his feet. “I love the secondhand shivers. If I’m not getting any directly, at least I can get it vicariously.”

“That,” Cas chided, letting Dean pull him up. “Is entirely inappropriate. Behave yourself or I’ll tell your mate you’re spying on him.”

Dean scoffed. “Shows what you know,” he teased. “Michael loves an audience.”

“Well, April doesn’t,” Cas chastised. “Not when she’s with Michael. Close your bonds during their intimate moments unless she’s explicitly authorized otherwise.”

“Geez, cranky much?” Dean groused as he left the office ahead of Cas.

Cas chuckled and shook his head. “Yep, right on time,” he commented. “I knew your brat needed a reaction from me, but I never tire of watching it emerge like a cat under the bed swiping at my ankles. You’re adorable, Dean Michael.”

“I’m adorable, sir, but do I get that reaction now?”

“You have to wait until tomorrow, Pet. I have plans for you that involve the Facility cafeteria, the breakfast rush, the serving line, and a soup ladle. And since this is a punishment, no, you may not safeword out. Don’t even think about it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Sir,” Dean grinned, strutting ahead so that his ass would be level with Castiel’s eyeline on the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one, chapter 13, and the next one, chapter 14, are being uploaded together for continuity. The conversation continues. Read on as you have time.


	14. Monday, January 28, 2019 (Cont. 3 of 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 of 3. The end of a very long day. Michael and April finally get a say about what comes next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Important Note***
> 
> Chapter 13 and 14 were posted at the same time. Be sure you've read the previous chapter before tackling this one.

Michael took the stairs two at a time, putting Dean out of his mind. He’d had it with Dean and his constant overbearing worries. Michael didn’t need an alpha putting up security fences all around him. Here he stood in the aftermath of the most intense experience of his life, chilled and thrilled and needing to share the exhilaration with his mate, and all Dean could do was throw a bitch fit over how _unsafe_ Michael’s actions had been. _Unsafe?_ Was Dean for real?

Michael grinned at his pups as he slipped into the nursery. He caught Alex around the chest and lifted him high into the air, tossing him playfully and catching him again. Alex chortled in glee. Dizzy as his heartrate caught up to his dash up the stairs, he decided swiftly that he’d be better off on the floor. Michael set Ace on his feet and then rolled down onto his back, still grinning.

“You’re pale,” Kate observed from the rocking chair where she was feeding Jimmy. “And sweating.”

“I’m fine,” Michael demurred. “How’s Alex been? He seems none the worse for wear.”

“It’s like nothing happened,” Kate remarked. Her eyes stayed trained on April, but April allowed Kate to answer. “He’s a resilient little guy. Unlike you, it seems. You look like you might pass out. Do you need a doctor?”

“I’m all right,” Michael repeated. He wasn’t about to talk about it to Kate. He found April sitting cross-legged on the floor across the room beneath the window. Emma turned pages of a book in her lap. “Big day, that’s all.” He sat up slowly. “Kate, I want to apologize for how I’ve been hovering. I don’t mean to make a pest of myself. Maybe we should just say if you need me, and if you want an ear, come find me. We’ll talk. I want to help. It’s, um, come to my attention that my help up to now hasn’t been all that helpful.”

Kate shot worried looks between the two Omegas as Jimmy wormed his way to sitting on her lap. She lowered her gaze to focus on the pup and blushed a deep red, saying nothing. April sighed quietly and hid her eye roll as she quietly pointed out a kangaroo to Emma. The air hung heavy with awkward tension. Michael frowned, uncomfortable and exhausted, but he couldn’t put a finger on what he was supposed to do now. Didn’t she want him to back off? He leaned back on his hands and shifted focus.

“Pete, are you okay? Do you need to rest?”

“I’m fine,” April answered, mirroring both his word and his tone. Kat climbed into her lap, squashing Emma a bit until April rearranged them both to share the space. 

“How can you be fine?” he pressed, rolling onto his belly. He glanced at Kate but decided that she didn’t need to be shielded. “That asshole had you. He could’ve…”

Michael couldn’t say anymore. His vision swam. A wave of nausea washed over him. He pressed his forehead into the rug beneath him. Alex climbed onto his back, straddling him like a horse.

April was suddenly right there. “Here, Michael, hold my hand. I’m here. We’re okay. Just breathe. Breathe through it.” She removed Alex from his mother’s back one-handed, encouraging him to go read with his sisters. “What are you feeling?” 

Michael rolled onto his hip and reached for her, burying his face in her belly. “I almost lost you today, Pete,” he whined.

April stroked his hair. “You saved me,” she reminded him. “You saved Alex. _You_ did that, Michael. I felt you. I felt you grow bigger inside. You were magnificent. You were on fire. You were terrifying and beautiful. You were so powerful, the air felt like it was made of crystal, and if you’d commanded it to, it would have broken into shards and dropped all of those creatures where they stood. I’ve never felt so safe in my life.”

Michael kissed her hip, resting his head in her lap. In the corner, Kate rocked mutely, watching, granting no clue what she might be thinking.

“What happened, Michael? What was that?” April asked him. She trailed warm fingers down his throat, avoiding his Mating-scar. “Cas called it ‘The Voice’. Did you know you could do that?”

Michael huffed humorlessly. “We studied it in class,” he admitted. “Each of us got a chance to try to find the harmonic that sets it off, but no one in my class got anywhere close. It was funny, actually. All of these pompous dweebs shouting at each other trying to pretend they had powers of compulsion, going red in the face and spitting everywhere.” Michael chuckled. “No one expected an Omega to be able to do it. I think they only let me try because I’m Castiel’s in-law. Or Dean’s mate. Whatever.”

“Don’t be angry with Dean,” she whispered with a deep, worried frown. “He’s spooked. That’s all. He’ll come around.”

“Sweet Pete,” Michael replied. He touched the back of his hand to her cheek. “Always more worried about everyone else. I’m worried about you. How are you, April? What do you need?”

She pursed her lips and shook off his concern. “I need you to explain what happened back there,” she insisted. “I’m fine, Michael. Alex is fine. We’re fine.”

Michael sat up. “Say it a few more times and you might start to believe it yourself,” he murmured. “So, you’re following Gabe’s playbook? Shove it all down into a hole somewhere and pretend it doesn’t exist?”

“I should go,” Kate said abruptly. She stood and settled Jimmy on the floor with his siblings.

Michael held a hand out to her. “You don’t have to leave,” he told her. “April needs Omegas around. You’re not intruding. I think having you here helps. Please stay?”

“I’ll, uh, be right next door if you need me. Just buzz me. Eunice taught me how to use the intercom. I can watch the pups while you two talk. Just…I shouldn’t be here for this.”

Michael watched her go. “Terrific. Now she’s afraid of me. I suppose that solves that problem.”

April regarded him with a shuttered expression, and the conversation lagged. Michael engaged with his pups, forcing a smile, kicking off a round of tickle fights that eventually turned on April as well. And she tried. She tried to suppress the gut-wrenching sobs that broke through stilted laughter, tried not to spoil the game, tried to bottle it all up as she’d been taught to do, but her bottle sprung leaks from every corner, and soon she was weeping violently in Michael’s arms and four dismayed pups sat perplexed on a rainbow-colored rug with fingers in their mouths and wide eyes watching their parents.

“I know, baby,” Michael soothed. “Go ahead and cry. I’ve got you.” He wrapped an arm around Alex as the toddler pushed between the two of them. “I’ve got you both. You’re safe now.” He kissed her golden hair, scenting her. April sobbed and Michael trembled. He closed his eyes and shut out everything but the feel of family in his arms and the scent of family in his nose.

She didn’t cry for very long considering the ordeal, replacing tears with outrage. She pulled away from Michael, taking Alex into her own lap, and she glared at him through tear-streaked lashes.

“What the fuck, Michael? What did I ever do to those people? Why? Why me? And Alex?! He’s just a baby! But then you were there. You were there and you… What _was_ that? Why won’t you explain?”

Michael sat back, taken by surprise at the rapid shift. “I don’t know, Pete. It’s never happened before. I mean, I know how it felt, but I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if I can do it again. All I knew was that I had to move heaven and earth to get to you two. You mean everything to me, April. I would do it again if I had to, even without the compulsion. I’d walk through fire for you.”

She huffed in exasperation. “You could’ve been killed, you idiot. And then where would I be?”

Michael held her chin in his palm and kissed her lips. “You would be fine,” he told her darkly. 

“You’re not expendable, damnit.”

He chuckled. “Maybe not. But I like to think that perhaps I have a right to decide for myself when and where and how I get to sacrifice myself. If I can learn to pull that voice out of my ass any time I want, then no one’s ever going to _make_ me do anything I don’t want to do…ever again. You get that that’s what Dean’s so pissed about, don’t you? That he’s losing control of me? He had a shaky grip in the first place, and now, unless I agree to play his pet Omega, he’s got no hold at all. You can feel them down there, can’t you?”

“Michael, don’t. It’s not like that.”

“They’re fighting again. You know what they’re fighting over? Over you and me, Pete. Over their Omegas. How do they keep us safe? How do they fix this? How do they…? How do _THEY?_ Don’t you see? It’s not them anymore, Pete. It’s me. It’s you. We don’t have to follow their rules now. I dug us a way out. Stick with me and you and I will be able to make our own rules. I set alphas on their knees today with my voice. Don’t you see what that means? It means hierarchy is mine to upend. I belong _above_ Dean and Cain and Sam and Kali…not below them.”

“No, I’m not going to be a part of that. And you shouldn’t either.” April stood up and faced him staunchly. “You’re not an alpha, Michael! I don’t care what your voice did! You’re going to…”

Michael chuckled. “Come here, baby. Sit down. Chill. I’m not starting a coup. I’m kidding. Emma, tell Mommy that O-Pop’s only kidding. It would be a trip though, wouldn’t it? Can you imagine Dean’s face? It’d serve him right.”

April sank down onto the daybed and pulled Kat into her lap. “Why did you do that?”

“Things were getting too emotional in here. Pete, I wasn’t trying to sacrifice myself. I really didn’t put that much thought into it.” Michael fell back again, spreading out on the floor and offering his body up as a climbing gym. “All that went through my mind was that you and Alex were in that goon’s hands and the last thing I said to you was that you shouldn’t have bothered coming along if you were going to be a bitch. You know what it would’ve done to me if I’d lost you today and those were my parting words?”

April laughed. “Always has to be about you, doesn’t it?”

“Pretty much,” he agreed, craning his head to check her upside down expression. “So, look, I’m sorry I was a dick. It was a stupid thing to fight about. You forgive me?”

April tried to maintain a somber expression, but he looked ridiculous upside down and hopeful, and she huffed. “Are you honestly going to back off Kate and give us all a break?”

Michael rolled onto his belly, tumbling Alex and Jimmy both. The pups squealed and clumsily piled on again for more abuse. Emma tried to feed a block into his mouth, but he caught her hand and nibbled her fingers instead. She squealed too, abandoning the block to climb with her brothers. Michael rested his chin on folded arms and regarded April. “Tell me what to do,” he said lightly. “Lead me, oh great guru of the wounded Omega heart.”

April shook her head and stood up to change Kat’s diaper. “You’re a moron,” she quipped.

Michael didn’t respond. His gaze drifted into the distance. His focus trailed down the stairs. “They really are fighting about us. You feel that?”

“I feel it,” April told him passively. “It’s not about us though. It’s about them.”

“Pete, why did Cas send you away down there? Shouldn’t he be hanging on your every sniffle right now?”

April continued working with her back to him. “I didn’t want Cas,” she said. “I wanted you. He sat with me in the car. Stayed beside me while I spoke to the police. He did everything I needed him to do.” April straightened Kat’s skirt, flattened her disobedient hair, and set her on the floor with a toy boat. “But it’s not Cas who’s going to help me make sense of what happened. He’s not the one who rescued me. He’s not the one who defied our own security guard and ignored all the reasons there were to stay hidden and wait for the cops, or for alphas, or for superman to come flying in. It wasn’t Cas who put them on their knees, Michael. It was you. I need you right now.”

Michael’s mouth fell open, and he sat up, folding his legs Omega-style. He licked his lips. “So, you’re not mad at me for risking my life?”

April smiled shyly. She smirked and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom to wash her hands. She had to dry them quickly when Michael’s voice warned her she had a runner “Incoming!” but she caught the pup before he pulled himself up on the toilet.

“What happens now?” April asked seriously after cleaning Jimmy Dean’s hands and settling back down on the floor with him in her arms. “It’s all changing, isn’t it? It’s already on the news. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since we got home.”

Michael wrapped an arm around her. He tucked his chin over her shoulder. “I’m ready, Pete. Whatever happens. As long as they don’t bench me entirely or try to make me sit at home with a bullet-proof vest on, I’m ready for whatever. I’m itching to get out there and face all the assholes with their assumptions and biases and privilege.”

“Where did all that power come from?” she asked innocently. “What was it like?”

Michael rubbed his face and stroked Emma’s light curls with a finger. “You know those deep, deep holes you shove your traumas down into when you don’t want to show them to someone? I think I drew up eons worth of outrage and injustice from the dark holes in our heads. It’s like having every harrowing or discriminatory thing that had ever happened to an Omega all coalesce into one outraged howl. I don’t know how I knew I could make them listen, but I didn’t doubt for a second. I felt like I was made of electricity, of beams of light, and I just knew. I just knew. I couldn’t’ve held it for long. I wouldn’t have been able to use it for anything trivial. It had to come through my own outrage, tying into generations of Omegas and their communal outrage.”

“So, it’s not just a Dominant thing like Castiel said. He said some of the most powerful Doms have that talent.”

Michael licked his lips and shook his head. His eyes lit up with vehemence. “No, it was more than ‘The Voice’, Pete. It was that, but it melded with an ocean of Omega rage that I called on to back me up and give me weight. You know how you sometimes feel like you’re sipping experiences from deep within a metaphysical well, Omega experiences? Well, imagine that the straw became a whole wide tunnel and you could suck all of it up, all of it, and wrap yourself in a cloak of powerful emotion. It’s like wearing impenetrable armor. It’s like…like being out of phase with reality and seeing right through physical existence to the truths we can’t see with our eyes, the eternal truths. For a few moments, I turned into a communal alloy of everything Omega, and it’s so, so much deeper than anyone told us. I wish I had a way to show you, Pete. I want you to feel it so you can put it to music!”

April smiled, reflecting his elation. She kissed him then pressed her cheek to his. “I felt it through you, Michael. Not all of it, but it was like looking into an endless abyss. It felt absolutely limitless.”

“It is, Pete. It’s limitless. Given enough motivation and practice, I could do almost anything metaphysical. Just think, alphas draw their power from some kind of spigot, sort of. I don’t know. But like a tap. The deeper the alpha, the wider the tap. But it’s not limitless, even for someone like Cas. Maybe he’s got a whole river of power at his disposal, but he only has access to what’s flowing between the banks. Omega power though, it has no banks. It’s an ocean. Or a sky, maybe. It’s the Universe itself, Pete! The Universe is Omega! Controlling it is about finding ways to bring it into motion, to create momentum, inertia, directional flow…you get me? ‘The Voice’ empowered me to set it moving and create inertia, but being Omega gave me access to the whole shebang, not just a trickle like an alpha gets.” Michael’s eyes were wide and excited. He grinned. “Obviously, I’m a god, Pete.”

She laughed. “Your son is sitting in poop, Michael. I’m pretty sure you’re not a god.”

Michael grinned on, standing up. “How else do you explain it? Yeah, no, definitely a god.” Michael scooped Jimmy up and laid him on the changing table.

“Have you told Cas what you experienced?” she asked.

“Nope,” Michael said succinctly.

“But you’re going to.”

“Nope,” he repeated, popping the ‘P’ percussively and focusing all his attention on his son.

“Michael…”

He turned with Jimmy at his shoulder and smirked. “Of course I am. Why are you always expecting me to mutiny? Alpha already has me down for a week of research interviews and exploratory tests after my last wolf-dream. So, we add another week after that. Whatever they wanna do, I’m game. But I’ll tell you one thing I really am willing to mutiny over: I’m not sitting on the sidelines anymore during their interviews and TV dates, seminars and conventions. I’m claiming my front row seat. I have things to say…about injustice, about Omegas, about Lupin repression in general. I’m gonna take on the Progressives, all dressed in their Sunday finest with their strings of pearls and their polished leather shoes, who’d as soon file off their own ear-points as admit they have Lupine needs. I’m going to take on the Ultra-Traditionalists with their god-awful theories that Omegas are destined to go insane if they so much as choose their own tie-clip. I’m going to go after the mom and pop nuclear families, Pete, like yours, like Dean’s, that try to pretend they can meet everyone’s needs with only three or four people in the house! Bring ‘em all on! I’m not sitting here anymore while the alphas do all the showboating.”

“What about Dean, then?” she asked carefully. 

“I’d like to see him try to stop me.” Michael’s eyes flashed gold. He froze as April flinched at his passion. “Whoa, Pete. Are you afraid of me? I would never…”

She stood and faced him. “No, it’s not that. It’s just… it was overwhelming, what you did.” 

She relaxed in his embrace. Letting him hold her up, surrounding her with his unique scent and his warmth, his tenderness beneath which lay a core of iron, April felt impervious…to attack, to violence, to statute, to compulsion, to falling…impervious even in ways Castiel couldn’t spare her. Or wouldn’t. “You and Dean being at odds over it is stressful. I hate it when you fight.” Jimmy tangled fingers into her hair.

Michael softened his expression. He nuzzled behind her ear, enjoying the explicit reality of her trust. She even _smelled_ like trust. “I won’t fight with him if I can help it, Pete. But I can’t pretend the whole world didn’t change today. I can’t go back to who I was. He’s going to have to catch up. I’ve molted right out of my skin, and I’m someone new now. It would be terrifying if it didn’t feel so perfectly right.”

Cas knocked on the doorframe as he cracked the nursery door open. Michael left his arm slung around April’s shoulder, but he gestured for the Alpha to come in.

“Are you two finished shouting at each other over us?” Michael joked. “Did you reach any conclusions? Does the straightjacket go on now or after dinner?”

Cas held the door for Dean who slipped in and scooped Kat off the floor for a quick snuggle. He stood a few feet distant from his mate, feeling him out from the inside, offering Michael an olive branch of sorts as he shared his resigned state of mind with his mate. Cas followed Dean in. Dean shrugged.

“We need to talk,” the Alpha stated. “We four. We must institute some changes, and as there are media vans in our driveway, we need to decide quickly.” Cas took April’s hand and led her to sit beside him on the daybed. Michael disappeared with the pup to wash his hands and then plunked down right in the middle of the room, eliciting a cackle of laughter from J.D. and drawing the two remaining pups to his lap like a magnet. Dean hesitated briefly and then settled on his side behind and around his mate. He accepted a generous, if sloppy kiss from Emma, and allowed Kat to join her siblings in scaling their O-Pop’s body from all directions. Dean tugged Michael to lean back into him. Michael’s weariness lingered, and Dean could feel it.

“Michael, I need your undivided attention, please,” Cas advised.

“Well, then, maybe the nursery isn’t the place for this discussion,” Michael observed, catching Alex before the toddler tumbled clumsily off his shoulders.

“Unfortunately, the staff are occupied at the moment,” Cas admitted. “Perhaps you could get up off the floor so you’re not such an enticing jungle gym.”

Michael chuckled, hugging Emma when she embraced him with her whole self. “Please, Alpha. I’m listening. Dean’s listening. No disrespect intended, Sir, but we need our pups right now.”

April slid down onto the floor, sprawling onto her belly and reaching out to tickle Alex’s bare toes. He giggled and reversed course to play with her. Cas sighed and joined the Pack, smiling in spite of himself when all four pups immediately homed in on the Alpha as he hit the floor.

He caught the twinkle in Dean’s eye, and he shook his head. “All right, then,” Cas said, admitting that having a lapful of pups was just the therapy he needed. “But I need your full attention.”

“Right,” laughed Dean. “Go ahead, Alpha. Talk serious shit with someone’s fingers in your mouth.”

“Dean, language,” Michael objected for the hundredth time.

“Sorry. Stuff, I meant. Stuff.”

But Cas wasn’t distracted. He seemed to take solace and focus from his children making themselves at home in his personal space. “Today’s events will take us a great deal of time to digest,” he intoned. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time before we need to address it publicly or we’ll appear to be regrouping, hiding. It is imperative that this development be embraced for the magnificent evolution it is, and that means that I need Michael…” Cas met Michael’s eye with a weighted look and flaring nostrils, “to step more fully into the limelight. Do you think you can handle speaking to the reporters outside, Michael?”

“You mean it?” Michael asked, skeptical. He shot a look over his shoulder at Dean’s face as his hands moved to draw Jimmy back into his lap when the pup found no space in his Papa’s. “Not just to showcase that I’m unhurt, but to allow me to speak for myself?”

“Michael,” Dean put in hesitantly. “I told you we were going to get here. Someday. You’ve done several seminars now. You know how to present yourself well. You know how to speak to people who want to throw you off message. God knows the camera loves you. And after today, if you don’t brush yourself off and prove you’re not psycho, the opposition is going to take the narrative and run with it. You bloodied them, man, but you didn’t break them. They’ll be back.”

“What about ‘pathologically stupid’? What about that whole ‘target-on-my-back’ thing?” Michael asked carefully. “The target’s still there, bigger than ever probably. There’s no way I’ll be able to pull off something like that every time someone gets in my face. Aren’t you afraid they’ll single me out for direct confrontation even more than before?”

Dean paused a moment. “There’s only one way to confront this now, man, and that’s straight head-to-head. Michael, unless you tell us you don’t want to participate, we need to write you into our public schedule.” Dean’s voice betrayed his discomfort, but he plowed through anyway. “And April needs to step up her public appearances too. You ready for that, kid?”

April gasped. “Me? What do I have to do with this? I don’t have any special message to deliver.”

All three men spoke at once:

“Are you kidding me?”

“You most certainly do!”

“You’re far more important than you know…”

They all stopped at once, and Cas continued when it was clear the others expected him to clarify. 

“Kitten, it’s time for us to expand our message. You remember we talked about unrolling it in phases.”

She nodded.

“You don’t have to be anything but yourself and follow the path you’re destined to follow,” Cas continued warmly, reaching out to touch her thigh. “Let us design the script around you. We will shift our message from how to stabilize Omegas to what a stabilized Omega is capable of accomplishing. It’s not only you two who’ll be showcased. It’s Balthazar, Dr. Harvelle, Donna – all radiant success stories. We’ll highlight professionals like Anna, you remember Anna from the wedding? Painters and artists, nurses, scientists, attorneys, social workers, business owners, child-rearers, teachers, the list is endless, because the possibilities are endless. What we need to know is how comfortable the two of you are about being poster-boys…and girls…for a campaign that may rub a great deal of friction into our daily lives.”

Michael sat forward immediately. “I’m in, Sir. Hundred percent. Give me a bullhorn and let me show them. I’ve been asking for a platform for ages.”

“Thank you, Michael. April? No pressure. Your career will be a highlight enough on its own without any help from me, but if you allow us to add your name to our campaign…”

“What if I fall on my face?” she asked uncertainly. “What if I embarrass you all by failing spectacularly? What would that prove?”

“That you’re human?” Dean smiled kindly. He touched her foot, wrapping a hand around it and squeezing. “But you’re not going to fail, kiddo. Your debut track earned a goddamn Grammy nomination.”

“On Nick’s coattails, Dean,” she protested. “It’s his show. I wouldn’t have even contributed if he hadn’t taken me under his wing…”

“Kitten,” Cas cut in. “The point isn’t how you got there. It’s that you’re holding your own now that you’re there. Your music is enthralling. It’s inspirational. It resonates. Seasoned musicians _want_ to collaborate with you. And the blunt truth is that it wasn’t until you were clear of the stressors that made you fixate on your own safety that you really found your musical voice. _That’s_ the message we’re trying to spread. I won’t include you if it makes you uncomfortable or adds too much pressure.”

“What would I need to do?”

Cas pressed in. “Let us use your name, your image, your music. Accompany me to events and speak to reporters sometimes. Keep attending seminar panels just as you’ve been doing. Nothing really needs to change, Kitten. You’re on your way to a very public presence anyway. Let us ride your coattails a bit. Let us showcase your brilliance and speak to a population of Omegas who’ve been beaten down, convinced by their own families that they lack the capacity to shine. We can talk about it all day, but highlighting successful Omegas will do for our message in days what speeches haven’t done for years.”

“Inviting Omegas up on stage at the Cons would have helped,” Michael added, a touch sullen.

“Maybe,” Dean replied. “But the audience wasn’t ready for that before now. We ran through all the outcomes a million times, Michael. We had to warm them up bit by bit. It’s easy to second-guess it all, but when we started, an Omega onstage would have derailed us. None of us liked it. You gotta believe me. I didn’t like it any more than you do. I would’ve loved to give Balthazar a panel of his own. He’d have fomented orgies in the aisles, and it would’ve been awesome. But it also would have backfired. They weren’t ready. Not like they are now. And with your voice reverberating on the evening news tonight, everything’s shifting fast.”

“The target on my back?” Michael challenged. “You’re suddenly fine with that?”

“Fuck, no,” Dean adamantly stated, sitting up with a grimace. “I hate it. But there’s no hiding you now, man. You’re a target no matter where you go, so fuck it, let’s roll. Bring it on, dude.”

“Just like that?” Michael rolled his shoulder to bring Kat around from his back to his lap.

“Today was big, Michael. Really big. And I know you’re chomping at the bit to have your say. I can’t protect you from what’s coming. But they’re finally listening, man. Really listening. Even our adversaries are standing still with their eyes and ears on this house waiting for you to emerge and either start eating babies or talking sense. I trust Castiel, Michael. I think you should too. I think you should let him guide you in working the message, into how to work the camera crews, in how to process what you did out there, how to present your stories. He’s a hell of a game-player. And at first, it’s going to feel like you’re being used, but give it some time. Ride with training wheels for a bit. You won’t need them forever.”

Michael frowned, removing Kat’s fingers from his mouth gently. “You’ve stated again and again that you trust Castiel,” he pointed out. “But then when something scary happens, you prove that you don’t. Not really. How do I know this time’s different? I’m not going to risk taking a step out in public that you turn out not to be totally fine with and having you tackle me to the pavement for my own protection. I can’t fight our enemies and my own mate at the same time.”

Dean blushed slightly and dropped his eyes. “Man, I get why you feel that way. I’ve been all over the map with this stuff. Since we met, I’ve been teasing the line out to you and then snatching it back. At first, I assumed you were too much of an introvert to want to get up in the spotlight with me, so I kind of made that call for you, expecting I was going to have to coax you into it…later…much later. I made a lot of assumptions, and that was a shit thing to do. When it became obvious that it was my discomfort talking and not yours, I freaked. It’s the same worry as if one of our kids was right there beside us. And I know, Michael. I know you’re not a child. I know you’re not my property to hunker over and protect. But tell that to my instincts, man. This is unbelievably hard for me. You understand that what happened out there today was every bit as horrifying as I’ve been imagining? You could’ve been killed. You had no idea what was going to happen.”

“But I didn’t get killed, Dean. No one laid a hand on me. Maybe you can take a step back out of your own head for a minute and acknowledge that how you feel isn’t the most important driver of this thing. I know you’re scared, and I know you love me. But your fear is a shackle on us both. I’m scared too, alpha. But I’m never going to live in a world that isn’t scary until we stand up to this thing and defy it. You’ve been scared for me for a couple of years, but I’ve been scared since I Presented. Dean, I found something inside myself, and it gives me armor. And what’s more, I didn’t kill anyone, even though I really, really wanted to. I didn’t go white-eyed fury. I didn’t lose myself. No one shot me, and no one had their throat ripped out. Now we know that I’ve got access to the wellspring of Omega power. There’s no way we would’ve known that if I’d obeyed you or played it safe so you didn’t have to feel fear.”

“I know, Michael. I know, man. It’s a good development. But it makes you more vulnerable to attack, not less. The thing is, I get it. Trying to keep you safe, it’s a losing proposition. There is no safety. I’m playing into their hands by sheltering you.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you, alpha,” Michael insisted.

“You and Cas, both,” Dean admitted uncomfortably. “You kinda forced my hand, here, buddy. Can you at least swear to me that you’ll follow Castiel’s lead? You may be powerful enough to level skyscrapers with your laser vision, but that voice of yours isn’t going to have any effect on Cas. I need you to let him guide you. We both need to trust him from here on.”

“Pa!” Emma babbled happily as she crawled toward Dean. “MMM-Pa!”

Dean grinned at her. “Really, sport? You got a ‘D’ in your wheelhouse for Daddy?” He scooped her up and blew raspberries on her belly.

“She’s only babbling, Dean,” Cas placated his husband. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Stow the crap, C.J. Accept the fact that they’re all going to kiss your ass first.” Dean tickled his daughter, and she erupted in laughter, reaching for his hair. He caught her attention and enunciated carefully. “Da-ddy, Idge. Say Daaa-deeee.”

April laid down on her belly, resting one hand on Michael’s knee while she held Castiel’s hand in her other. “The goal here is to _show_ people what you’ve been telling them,” she summed up. “That even Ozzies are just regular people once you handle all their individual special requirements. Guys, that’s not a new message. There are tens of thousands of Omegas living full lives. Look at my mother. No one modelled anything for her….”

“Your mother is hobbled, Kitten,” Cas interrupted reluctantly. “Your parents are as much a product of the times they emerged from as anyone else. Kathleen lives in a half-phase most of the time. She’s Balanced well in her Secondary, but she doesn’t get near enough support for her Tertiary, and it shows in her reluctance to engage in anything of her own. She is singularly focused on your father. That benefits him, so he’s got no motivation to alter it.” Cas had his eyes averted. April stared at him, shocked.

“You’ve been assessing my parents?”

“It’s difficult not to when Omega stability is a core focus of my career and they’re your parents. I didn’t mean to overstep. But you cannot use Omegas who aren’t actualized as examples of Omega actualization.”

“So, according to you, if my father beat the snot out of my mother, she would have opened a bookstore of her own?” April challenged in offense. “Maybe she stays at home and focuses on him because that’s what she prefers. Not everyone needs a spotlight, Castiel.”

“April, please. I don’t mean to be rude. Your mother carries a sour aftertaste in her scent. It’s the smell of regret and resentment. She covers for it well, but she has been stifled by her own mate. This is why she pushed for you to leave Oklahoma for your training. There was a brand-spanking-new training facility an hour’s drive from your home. I’m forever grateful to her for sending you to us instead. You would have been horribly abused there. But, April, she wanted to give you a chance to get far away from your father’s repressive hand. Love, your mother saved you from the life that’s strangled her. I need you to believe I’m not imagining what I’ve seen. She’s a wonderful woman, but she’s essentially powerless. You don’t have to be.”

“My father protected me! He isn’t strangling anyone!” April rose to her feet and stood defiant, glaring down at her mate.

Cas remained calm but he didn’t cave. “Your father protected you so that he could keep you as his little girl forever. He was never planning to let you go.”

“How dare you?”

“Cas,” Dean broke in. “Is this necessary?”

“Yes,” the Alpha affirmed. He handed Jimmy to Dean and stood up to meet April’s ire. He placed one hand on each upper arm, bracing her, meeting her eyes with honest fervor. “Kitten, it’s necessary. Listen to me. You’re right that many, many Omegas, Ozzies even, are living full unfettered lives. That’s true – far more now than twenty or thirty years ago. It’s not your father’s fault that his mind is caught in the culture of his upbringing. It’s not your mother’s fault that she was powerless to do more than make the best of what she had. But you don’t have to get stuck in the same web she’s trapped in. It’s not a death sentence, love, but she could have been so much more. We’re building a whole new culture, and it needs to be in place before our pups Present. Do you understand? I’m not attacking your parents. I’m showing you that even Omegas who seem content may not be living the ideal that they appear to be. Yes, there are certainly wolves of all designations who would find a lifestyle such as your mother lives to be a perfectly idyllic way to live. Not everyone longs for the stage. I know that. But your mother isn’t one of those people, April. And she desperately wants you to have a shot at what she’s been denied. She wants her grandchildren never to know that obstacles such as those that stopped her from growing to her fullest ever existed in this society. We can give her that, Kitten. You and I, Michael, Dean, all of us, if we work together, we can change the world.”

“Why didn’t she ever tell me?” April asked.

“What could she have said,” Cas asked back, “…that didn’t undercut the man you both love? He’s not a bad man, Kitten. He’s as much a slave to culture as your mother is. He had no idea there was another way. Even still, the resources someone like your father would need to educate himself and pull himself into a different way of thinking…those resources aren’t in place yet.”

“The point, April,” Dean added with a sharp look at Cas. “Is that until we strip away the institutions of patriarchy and systemic repression, no one can be sure what any Omega is capable of. You don’t have to play an active role at all. Just being yourself and making a go of a life under a marquee is enough to prove that people’s assumptions about Omegas are bullshit.”

“Language, please, alpha.”

“If you pull down the patriarchy, Dean, what’s left?” April asked naïvely.

Dean grinned from his spot on the floor where Jimmy and Kat were skirmishing for room on his lap, Alex attempted to climb onto his back, and Emma held tight to the real estate at his shoulder, bouncing herself on his thigh. “Pack hierarchy, the way nature, the Universe, and the moon intended,” he quipped.

She huffed. “Naturally. How do I know I’m not just as repressed, but instead of being shoved into a closet at home, I’ve been groomed for a life on the stage as your poster boy? Maybe I’ve been brainwashed.”

Cas drew himself up and looked down his long nose at her. “Your wish is my command, Kitten. We’ll cancel every event, watch the Grammys from our couch, and raise a toast to your ‘One-Hit-Wonder’ status. You aren’t under anyone’s directive to do anything but follow the rules framed on your bathroom wall. You are free to quit making music today.”

April bit her top lip, willing her grin away, but it eked out anyway, and she wound up rolling her eyes as Cas tugged her in for a kiss to her Mating-scar that curled her toes. She shoved him off.

“All right. I’m in. Like I really had a choice anyway. I’ve got three interviews scheduled this week. Nick wants me in L.A. before Sunday, but I’ve been putting him off. Can we turn any of that into messaging? I can fly to Los Angeles and rub elbows and stuff. Cain could go with me. We’ve been practicing our connections and our communication. I think we’ve got it down. Nashville went off without a hitch.”

Castiel touched her chin and kissed her nose. “How are you this resilient, Kitten?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just a day in the life of an Ozzie, Sir. Would you feel better if I curled up in my bed and wept?”

Dean and Michael laughed. Cas narrowed his eyes. “Leave the bratty rejoinders to the brat, my darling,” he reproved playfully, pulling her in for a kiss to her lips. “If you like,” he spoke intimately, just for her. “You and Michael may spend some time before dinner together.”

“Doesn’t he need to go down and speak to the reporters?” she asked.

“That won’t take long. No more than half an hour, tops. Dean and I will take the pups after the reporters leave with their stories. April, I know you need him right now more than you need me. Can we agree not to belabor that point? After all, it wasn’t me who came to your rescue when you needed someone. Go on, Kitten. Go on and tell him what that means to you.”

She smirked. _”Tell_ him?”

Cas swatted her ass, chuckling.

“Nooo, Papa!” Alex waddled across and reached for his Papa’s right hand. “Mommy!”

Cas laughed and hoisted the boy onto his hip. “You seem to have more than one knight-protector today, Kitten.” April snuggled her son in Castiel’s arms, bringing her arms up around them both.

On the floor, Michael’s head rested in close concert with Dean’s although they weren’t speaking. They held hands beneath their chins, resting their temples together and breathing. A calm sense of home, hearth, and Pack descended, turning the nursery into a secure nest. Slowly, Cas moved to lower himself and his mate to join their Packmates. Lying tummy down in a starfish formation with their heads all tucked closely, Dean, Michael, April, Cas…they lay still and breathed. Pups ambled happily, obliviously over them, and the four of them centered in their own scents, in their mutual warmth, in commitments powerful enough to stretch to the limits before bringing them right back here to this place.

“Is everyone else as scared as I am?” Dean whispered, reaching for Castiel’s hand.

“We’d be crazy not to be,” Michael reassured his mate.

“I think we need a fourway scene tonight after the pups are asleep,” April added softly. “I need to reconnect with my boys, all of you.”

“Even me?” Dean asked, intrigued.

“Of course you,” she grinned. “You keep promising to Sub with me, but you never do.”

Dean grinned back at her, biting his lip. He shot a look at Cas. “Permission to be an annoying brat this evening, Sir?”

“Denied, as always, Pet. Brat at your own risk. I authorize nothing, and you’re in chastity. Consider carefully what you provoke from me.”

Dean snickered and lowered his head to chuckle into the rug. He squeezed Michael’s hand and rolled his head sideways until he was in Michael’s space. Michael huffed in forbearance and made way for his mate. Hovering over Dean’s face, Michael looked reproachfully down at him.

“Some alpha you are,” he muttered. “I thought you were going to teach me a lesson about recklessly endangering myself. Where’s my punishment, Dean?”

“Mmm,” Dean hummed. “Maybe we’ll skip it this time considering that what you did was badass enough to stand on its merits.”

“What kind of message is that to send to my Secondary, Winchester?” Michael teased. “Letting me skip class and clinicals, shrugging off … what did you call it …pathologically stupid behavior that just so happened to flatten the Styne’s cult in one afternoon. Maybe instead of punishing me, you should bake me cookies. Plus, I hadn’t even told you yet, I got a stellar review from Lawrence Memorial and a note of gratitude for my work last week. Jody said I can almost skip the rest of the semester and I’ll still pass in the top half of the class.”

Dean caught Castiel’s eye. “You see what you’ve done to him, Alpha? I told you his head was too big for his shoulders already. Now he’s going to be impossible to live with.” Dean spoke from beneath Michael’s chin, and Michael angled his head to take hold of Dean’s cheek with his teeth. Dean squealed an unmanly screech, summoning all four pups into the cozy center of their tight circle. Soon they were all laughing too hard to continue their discussion and Cas had to scold two of his pups for emulating their O-Pop’s misuse of teeth on flesh.

The intercom buzzed. Fred’s voice carried into their relieved giggling.

“Alpha, as you requested, I’m alerting you that thirty minutes has passed. Would you like me to notify the guardhouse to begin signing in press representatives or do you need more time?”

Cas extricated himself and sat up. “We’re on our way down, Fred. We’ll set up in the foyer. Don’t let anyone in the house until I’m there to supervise.”

“Very good, Alpha. I will phone the guardhouse, directly.”

The other three sat up as well, each touching the others, each cuddling a pup. Castiel met their eyes, one by one. “Are we ready for this?”

***************

Reporters, Lupin and Primate alike, swarmed the space before the grand staircase where Michael stood two steps up with Castiel at one shoulder, Dean at the other, and a busy hive of microphones in his face.

“Michael! Have you been training to use _Compulsion_ on alphas?” The reporter shouted over several others with his hand waving high in the air. His voice carried, somewhat ironically.

Michael blushed but shook his head. “Not at all. No one trains for something like this. Most Dominants discover they have that talent by accident, during moments of duress. That’s what happened to me today. I was angry and frightened, and it came over me. I didn’t really control how it happened. What I did control was how I used it. All I cared about was freeing my Packmates. They had my son and my girlfriend. What would you have done? What would any of us have done? I got lucky to find that I wasn’t as unarmed as I thought I was. But I didn’t know that until it happened.”

Hands waved desperately in the air again. Another voice broke audibly through the ruckus. 

“But you didn’t stop at simply securing her safety. You went on to threaten alphas and betas, to put them on their knees and humiliate them. Why the excessive force once your family was safe? What were you trying to prove?”

Michael flushed again, but this time in anger.

“Excessive force? What do you know of excessive force?” he blurted. “They were descending on us from every direction! Go back and watch the scene again. I stopped them in their tracks to _prevent_ any kind of excessive force. Don’t put their humiliation on me. They humiliated themselves, acting like rampaging animals instead of people. They all got far less than they deserved. Every step they took onto private property with intent to disrupt was illegal. Putting their filthy hands on an innocent woman and her son was illegal…”

“Is Monroe Styne pressing assault charges? You appear to have broken his nose?”

Michael stifled a giggle and shot a look over his shoulder at Castiel’s stoic face. He reined himself in. “Not that I’m aware,” he answered. “He’s free to do whatever he feels he must as long as it’s within the bounds of the law. It’s still a free country to my knowledge.”

“Are you planning an Omega uprising?”

Michael laughed openly. “No. That’s ridiculous. Stop believing absurdities.”

“Why did the crowd kneel, Michael? Wasn’t this a staged demonstration, organized by your Pack Alpha to…?”

“There was nothing staged about it,” Michael broke in fiercely. “They knelt to a superior force. Just as you would kneel if a Deep alpha commanded you to using all his powers of compulsion to speak to your deeper designations. They knelt because I outrank them in Tertiary status and Secondary moral rectitude. It doesn’t take training or staging or manipulation or brainwashing to act authentically as wolves. We are who we are, all of us.” Michael’s voice echoed from the high ceiling, a crude mimic of his full power, but a notable effect nonetheless. They all fell still under his vehemence. “A far better question is why am I the only Omega who’s done this in modern times? Our legends are full of Omegas who wield mystical, almost supernatural, powers. I proved today that there’s more to those stories than bedtime tales. So, where have Omegas like me been all these centuries? Why am I the first? I’m nothing special. I’m not some manufactured lab specimen. I grew up in Grand Prairie Texas, for Pete’s sake, on a horse and dog breeder’s estate. I mucked out horse stalls my whole childhood. Cleaned dog kennels. You know why I’m rare? Pure, dumb luck. Because I survived an adolescence that should have killed me, just as it kills countless Omega-Dominants every damn year. But I made it through, and I made it to Kansas where one small group of scientists is following data instead of dogma, and who are teaching the rest of us how to traverse the narrow strip of safe path between the bestial that our nature demands and the human that we aspire to. If I can find my true destiny through their guidance, anyone can.”

Michael curled into Dean’s nude body late that night, after an evening of simple choices and reinforced Pack connections, lying side by side in the big bed. He trembled, and he allowed Dean to hold him. Michael felt unaccountably sleepy. All of his muscles ached. He couldn’t stop shivering.

“Some fourway,” Dean quipped in disappointment over Michael’s head as Castiel approached from the bathroom. “One bloke down with the shakes. One in the cage. That’s fifty percent of the players right there.”

“You, I’m not worried about, my love,” Cas replied coolly. “If I feel like putting you to work this night, then work you will. But Michael deserves our support, and he needs rest more than he needs sex right now.” Cas turned toward his mate as she too emerged from the bathroom, her hair caught up in a towel. “You too, Kitten. Straight to bed. Tuck that lower lip in before I give you something to pout about.”

“Please, sir. I’m not tired” She draped her dewy body into his chest, and he chuckled and kissed her brow. “That’s a lie, love. You’re drained. We’ll put our foursome off until tomorrow, at which time all of us will be better suited to enjoy it fully – all, that is, except Dean, who is still not permitted to partake, more’s the pity.”

“Your false sympathy is patronizing bullshit,” Dean commented. “Keep it to yourself.”

“Mm, someone still seems not to have learned his lesson about speaking respectfully to his Sir,” Cas remarked with weighted promise. Dean smirked into Michael’s shoulder.

“How’re you feeling, champ?” Dean asked his wilted mate. “Anything going on but the trembles? You want me to take a look?”

Michael shook his head subtly. “I ca..can’t seem…to st….stop shaki…ing.”

“Aftershocks, chief,” Dean told him. “Nothing to worry about. Are you cold?” Dean tugged the comforter over Michael’s shoulder and rubbed his back vigorously.

“A little.”

“Cas?” Dean called over his shoulder, breaking the Alpha from snuggling with his mate. “He’s not calming down. Can you take a look?”

“Michael’s got to flush the heavy hormones out of his system, Dean. As long as he’s not feverish, we need to let the process run its course. Hold him and keep him warm. Kitten, climb in behind Michael under the blankets. Let’s surround him in Pack scent and let his body do the rest.”

Cas took April’s towel from her and tossed it lazily into the hamper. He regarded his bed as he approached, and he didn’t need Dean’s subtle nod to decide that his mate needed him more tonight than Dean did, but he agreed with a small smile anyway, appreciating the selfless gesture. He pressed his hand to Dean’s foot beneath the covers as he passed, and he tucked warmly in beside April’s damp body. Her hair left a moist spot on his pillow, and he affected a huff of annoyance before winking at her and flipping the pillow.

“We’ll make up for it all tomorrow, Kitten. You, me, Michael, Dean. Go to sleep, my little one. You’re safe now, right where you belong. No one’s going to touch a hair on your head ever again. I won’t allow it. Michael won’t allow it. Dean won’t allow it. We’ve got you, Kitten, all of us.”

April wrapped her arms around Michael from behind and pressed her cheek to his shivering back. Her face nearly disappeared beneath the comforter. Her voice found its way out. “Cas, did we overdo it earlier, when we fucked? He wasn’t shaking then. I thought he was okay. Is this my fault?”

Michael reached behind his leg and pressed a hand into her hip. Cas laughed softly. “I wasn’t there, Kitten, but I will say that a round with you is often quite rigorous. It wouldn’t surprise me if you made a practice of leaving men shivering, babbling wrecks in your wake.”

Michael snorted. April chuckled uncomfortably.

“You’re joking. That has to mean he’s all right,” she observed.

“He’s fine, April. Your play together earlier this evening hasn’t hurt him. This reaction is normal. He’ll sleep hard and wake up fine in the morning. He can expect to feel more fatigued than usual for the next few days, but it’ll be no worse than a runner who’s just completed a marathon. He isn’t hurt. You’ll have to up your game if you want to get a reaction like this on your own.”

She relaxed and laughed. She turned her head to shoot her mate an exasperated look that he met with a kiss and a smirk. “Go to sleep, April. I love you dearly. Let’s not dwell on today’s events. You’ll tell me if you struggle to process it and to let it go, but from here, I’ve got you.”

“I don’t want you to kill him, Cas. Can you promise me?”

“Unfortunately,” Dean mumbled.

Castiel sighed heavily, aborting his response and snuggling down behind his mate instead. He pressed into her, creating a tight sandwich and feeling too blessed to take anything for granted. Michael’s tremors continued long into the night, but the Omega slept soundly through the worst of the aftershocks. Dean and Cas listened to one another’s breathing, aware that they were both awake as their mates slept. They had too much to think about to succumb to sleep, even with the necessity to meet the morning at a run. Momentum might start slowly, but it took everything in its path along with it…that, or crushed unwary victims under its mass.

Only the morning would tell. Even the Alpha couldn’t control everything. So much was no longer in his hands. So much depended on people and how they digested what they’d seen. Cas stretched his right arm along the headboard, over April’s head, over Michael’s, and he found Dean’s bicep. A little bit of jostling brought Dean’s fingers intertwining with Castiel’s at the head of the bed. With a squeeze, Cas closed his eyes and let sleep take him.

***************

Conditioned to awaken before dawn to go out running before daylight traffic hit the pavement, Cas woke not to the usual stillness before day, but to a rhythmic, telltale shifting to his right. His mate’s breathing coarse, raspy, and desperate, Cas lay still with his eyes open in the dark and listened. He let the grogginess of a short night’s sleep linger. He rolled onto his side to face the couple who were too lost in themselves to care that they’d woken the Alpha.

He couldn’t see much in the rich darkness of ultra-early morning, but there was just enough light to make out the outlines of their bodies, pulsing slowly in concert with one another. Michael whined. Fingers gripped April’s hip, highlighted vaguely in the filtered sheen of moonlight through gossamer curtains.

Castiel rested his cheek in his palm and closed his eyes. He sent tendrils of awareness out to his mate and scoured her psyche, half vicarious pleasure and half examination.

“You told me not to do that,” Dean’s sleepy voice broke the near silence from across the languorous couple. “Why is it okay when you do it?”

Michael huffed. He rolled his partner over, right into Cas who had to shift backward to avoid being crushed. With a heavy sigh, Cas slid off the bed and circled it. Looming high over his husband, he set one knee on the bed and leaned down for a kiss.

“Because I’m Alpha,” he whispered.

Dean snorted and pulled him to lie down. “We need a rule that anyone who wants a midnight fuck needs to go find another bed,” Dean grumbled. “This is bullshit.” He cocooned himself in his husband’s warm chest and burrowed back under the warm blankets, seeking sleep.

Cas ran affectionate fingers through his hair. “You should be grateful that Michael’s feeling better.”

“And I will be,” Dean mumbled. “In the morning. When normal people are awake. Not in the middle of the night when Omegas who expended three quarters of their life force and need to recuperate should be sleeping.”

“It is morning, my love,” Cas explained. “Come out and run with me.”

“Not a chance,” Dean grumbled, securing his arms around Cas’ shoulders in a bid to lock him fast as a living pillow.

“It would be good for us both. Does wonders for your stamina. What about cycling? Would you rather ride? The streets are empty this early.” Cas allowed a teasing lilt to touch his tone, and Dean cracked an eye open.

“With the state of my ass right now? You wanna put me on a bike? Sadist.”

“Mmm.”

Michael grunted into the drive of his hips. The intensity of their coupling began to peak. April’s chin pointed high to the ceiling, and she clung to Michael’s shoulders.

“Don’t stop,” she pleaded. “Please, Michael…”

“Oh, brother,” Dean groaned. “Yeah, Michael, for god’s sake, don’t stop. Don’t pay any attention to the other half of the bed who got…what?...three hours of sleep what with worrying about you all night. By all means, keep going.”

Michael broke into a grin, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. He laughed and lowered his head to seek out a morning-breath kiss from April, who was only too happy to comply. The sounds of their breathing turned guttural and desperate, the bed pulsing beneath them, and they came one right after the other, moaning as they wrapped around each other.

Outside, the sky remained stubbornly black.

Dean rolled his eyes and his body until he lay flat on his back. “Good. Nice. Everybody done now? Can we go back to sleep?”

Michael left a kiss on April’s temple and a gentle smile for her and then he shifted across until his face was right in Dean’s space. “You’re being very rude, Submissive.” Michael’s tone deepened, setting Dean’s wolf on immediate alert. “Apologize to April.”

“Me?” Dean sputtered. “I’m not the one who woke everyone up at some ungodly hour. I’m not the one who took over three fourths of the bed, forcing Cas to find somewhere else to sleep. Why is this bullshit my fault?”

“Because I said so,” Michael replied. “Apologize, and I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

“Fuck that,” Dean shot, rolling back into Castiel’s chest and tugging the comforter over his head. Cas sighed heavily. He kissed the crown of Dean’s head where it peeked out of the blankets, and he extricated himself from the bedding and his lover’s arm.

Heading toward the bathroom, he said over his shoulder. “Apologizing would have been easier, Pet. I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t maim him, Michael. He has a great deal of work to do today.”

“This is bullshit,” Dean protested. He burrowed deeper and lay still and tense, waiting for Michael to put his foot down. “I didn’t do anything.”

Slowly, Michael eased his way off of April’s body. She lazily stretched out languid muscles, yawning luxuriously and snuggling down under the down comforter in bliss, and she closed her eyes. Michael eased the covers off of Dean’s head and shoulders, and he regarded his mate, searching inside him.

“Safeword, Dean?”

“Jerk,” Dean replied.

“Mmm, my brat craves my attention.” Michael licked a stripe up Dean’s cheek. Dean jerked back with a disgusted yelp and rolled over, disappearing under the covers again.

“Your brat craves another two hours of sleep!”

“Mm-mm,” Michael disagreed, following and digging him back out. “That’s not what your wolf is telling me.”

“Fine, then you and my wolf can go make happy noises together somewhere else, and let me sleep,” Dean grumbled. Cas emerged from the bathroom wearing his running togs and carrying a set of ear buds. He left without a word.

“Dean, look at me. Come on, sit up and look at me.”

“Man, it’s three in the morning! Can we please do this when the sun comes up?”

“It’s five-thirty, Dean. Breakfast is in an hour. It’s now or never. And I’m saying we do this now. Sit up.”

Dean reluctantly worked his way to sitting. He glared at Michael. “Why is it that everyone’s always trying to get me to sleep more, and then when I do, you’re all about waking me up?”

“Stop whining. It’s not all that early. You get up on your own at five o’clock often enough.” Michael straddled Dean’s thighs and cupped his face. Dean pressed his cheek into his mate’s palm.

“You’ve got me at breakfast, sir,” Dean grumbled. “Why wake me now too?”

“Because we need to talk and because you need me to take your hands in mine right now and carry you onto firm ground. You lost it on me a little bit yesterday, dude. You remember that? You remember what you said? Give me your hands, Dean. Don’t argue. Do it.”

Dean slumped in defeat. He held his hands out in front of him. Michael took them, holding them, rubbing firm circles on the backs with his thumbs. He held Dean’s eyes, green into green, and his expression sombered appreciably.

“Dean, I’m your Omega. That’s not changing. But that’s for _out there_, not for in here. In here, I’m your partner and your mate and your Sir. I will give you however many children you desire. I will dedicate my life to making you happy and building a Pack with you. I love you, alpha. I love you so fucking much.”

“But…?” Dean asked.

Michael sat back a little. “But this overlord protective alpha attitude that you and Castiel have going where my life choices are concerned, this alpha imperative authority crap where the two of you sequester yourselves so you can plan out how to protect and train me, that stops right now, Dean. No more discussing my safety or my role without me present. You’re not my keeper. I may not be alpha, but I won’t be gagged.”

Dean’s eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. Then he frowned.

“I _wanted_ to discuss it _with_ you, Michael, but you _left!_ You walked out.”

Michael didn’t rise to the provocation. He licked his lips and centered himself. He shook his head. “I don’t think you even see it, Dean. Alpha privilege runs so thoroughly through your veins that you’re convinced that it has to be alphas who shepherd the Omega population through the scary trials ahead of us, and you can’t even see why that’s problematic.”

“Hierarchy is real…”

Michael set a finger over Dean’s lips. April sat up, studying her lap. “Hierarchy governs how we arrange our household, alpha, nothing more. I don’t need you designing my redemption. I don’t need a savior. I need a partner.”

Dean squeezed his mate’s hands. “We need leaders, Michael. This movement is momentum-fed. Without visionaries and leaders, it’s chaos, and it gets us nowhere.”

“How many Omega leaders do we have right now?” Michael challenged. “None, Dean. We have none. Alphas plan and direct everything, implement everything, herd the bewildered Omegas from one pen to another for their own good, for the ‘vision’ of Omega empowerment. Don’t you see the disconnect? You wanted me to pay my dues before you would let me wield a sword on my own behalf, and I honored that request. That seemed fair to me. So I signed up for training and I’m following through, gaining experience wider than my own life, broadening my view. What are _you_ doing to broaden yours?”

“We’re not having this conversation at five in the morning, man.” Dean tugged his hands free and squirmed his way from underneath the Omega. “I pay my dues every day, Michael.” Dean stood next to the bed, sleep-tousled and grumpy. “I can’t _be_ Omega. But I can dedicate my life to researching new approaches to overcome the mistrust and infantilization of Omegas. That’s the best I can do. I’m not blind to alpha privilege. I’m using it as part of my arsenal. You want me to step out and hand it over to Omegas so there’s no conflict of interest? Try it and see how much inertia you hold onto.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Michael argued. “I’m saying that a partnership that includes Omegas in key positions will allow for a far stronger societal edifice than anything alphas can build on their own. I’m not trying to weed you out, Dean. I’m trying to make you see that you’re working from a colonial perspective. But we aren’t savages. We aren’t children. We aren’t heathens in need of saving. And we deserve a voice in our own reclamation. I left you downstairs yesterday because you weren’t going to drop the alpha mask and really talk about what bothered you until your only audience was another alpha. You were too caught up in the A/O dynamic and holding me accountable for behavior that was too ‘alpha’ for your comfort. It’s not my job to make you comfortable, Dean, not at my own expense.”

Dean ground his teeth together. “It’s not that simple,” he grunted.

“Which part?” Michael shot back. “The part where Omegas are unstable and unreliable?” Michael didn’t say the rest out loud, but the truth that over the last year Dean had been the far more unstable of the two of them. He didn’t need to say it.

“We’re getting there, man,” Dean tried again.

“So you’ve said,” Michael replied.

“Look, I told you. You’re in. There’s no going back now.”

“I know, Dean, and I appreciate the change of heart, but the issue isn’t where I’m allowed to go and who I can talk to, it’s who gets to decide where I go and who I talk to. You and Cas both talk a good game, but you hold your planning meetings without a single Omega in the room.”

“Are you ever going to stop pushing?” Dean decried. “What’s next? Are you going to lead the armies into battle with a machete in your hand?”

“If I have to.”

Dean huffed and shook his head. “We need to get you a hobby, Michael.”

Michael laughed. “Knocking alphas down a peg is my hobby,” he added. He slid to the edge of the bed and reached for Dean’s hands. “It’s a lot to think about, I know. But think about it. Please. The law treats Omegas as incompetent children. The aboriginals treat Omegas as sexualized children. The Ultra-Traditionals treat Omegas as disabled children. And Castiel treats Omegas as salvageable children. Only the Progressives see Omegas as adults, and they miss the point completely. It has to stop. We’re not children. We deserve a voice. We deserve to be written into our own fight-plan. And as painful as it is to admit, we can’t do that ourselves. We have to be invited in. We hold no power without alpha grace.”

“I thought you were supposed to be flat on your back for a couple of days,” Dean grumped, stepping closer and carding fingers through Michael’s hair.

“Sex invigorates me,” Michael teased. “I feel loads better.”

The moment lengthened. Dean studied his mate with a solemn expression. “Baby, you’re not wrong. I need you to keep in mind how far we’ve come in a very short time. All of our plans going forward include Omegas in positions of design and implementation.”

“I’ll be sure you get a medal,” Michael told him flatly. “Forget about embedding Omegas at the Facility for a second. I’m talking about right here at home. If you and Cas don’t even include Omegas in your own discussions in your own home, what hope is there for the rest of the country?”

“At home is where hierarchy is the most important,” Dean countered.

“Good grief, alpha! Are you being dense on purpose? You two weren’t discussing household hierarchies down there yesterday! You were talking about me, about April, about how much participation you’re ready to allow us in a fight that affects us far more than you! I’m not going to argue that the final decision shouldn’t be in Alpha’s hands, but the two of us should have been a part of the conversation. We’re not your pets.”

Michael was keyed closely into Dean’s psyche, struggling to comprehend why the alpha had his stubborn feet set when Michael had expected a far softer version of his mate now that the two of them were finally allied soldiers enmeshed in the same war. Dean understood. Michael knew he did. The defensiveness was token. Something else was bothering Dean, but Michael didn’t know what it was.

He cocked his head in consternation, studying Dean inside and out. He narrowed his eyes.

“You’re emasculated,” he concluded after a minute or two. 

Dean rolled his eyes and reversed into the bathroom with a disgusted huff. Michael followed. “Is that it? You spend all your time at home on your knees either for him or me, and now I’m cutting into your last alpha footprint?”

“I need to prep for breakfast, Sir,” Dean told him shortly.

“Alpha, we can redistribute time.”

“We just did that,” Dean reminded him. “You need more time in your nineteen. I promised to give you that, and I don’t take promises like that lightly.”

“So, we adjust again,” Michael argued. “As far as I know, there’s not a limit to how many times we can adjust the balance.” Dean flipped a towel over the glass wall of the shower and leaned in to turn the water on.

“You’re pale,” Dean diverted. “Go sit down before you fall down.” The backs of Dean’s thighs showed streaks of bruising leading up to fiery damage across his butt. He moved as if it didn’t hurt at all. He slipped into the shower alone and closed the door on his mate. Michael sat on the edge of the bathtub to wait. April squeezed his shoulder as she passed him on her way to the toilet. He touched the small of her back without comment. He felt a little shaky yet. Maybe sitting was the better choice after all.

When Dean emerged again, Michael picked up where he’d left off. “Alpha, we can’t ignore this and expect it to go away. You need to talk to me.”

“The pups are waking up,” Dean told him. He slipped into a soft pair of sweatpants and dried his hair with a towel.

“Damnit, Dean! Talk to me!”

Dean rounded on him. “What do you want me to say? That it feels like I’m losing you? Like I don’t know who you are anymore? That you need Cas and April more than you need me? That you traded me for her?”

Michael stared at his mate, stricken. “Is that what think?” he whispered in shock.

Dean looked away.

“You don’t need an alpha at all, do you?” Dean grumbled. “A Dom mentor, maybe. A Sub who’ll stroke your nineteen. A girlfriend who lets you forget you’re a wolf. But you don’t need an alpha at all.”

Michael nearly laughed at the absurdity, but he caught himself. Instead he approached his mate at a ponderous pace, giving Dean the chance to choose whether to meet him or flee. Dean stood still. “Your brat is a beautiful creature, my love, but he doesn’t get a vote this time. This is between your Secondary and mine. So let me make this very, very clear. Dean Michael, I am Omega. And I’m damn proud of that fact. You taught me to take pride in that fact, and I need you in all your aspects. I need my alpha mate like I need air to breathe and food to eat. I cannot live without you. I think your brat has something caught in his craw right now, so I’m going to spend the whole breakfast hour working whatever it is free. Right now, I want you to take me over your knee and remind me what an alpha is for.”

There was pain behind the crinkle of Dean’s eyes, but he sighed and rested his forehead on Michael’s shoulders. “Hold on, I’ll get my gun.”

“Your gun?” Michael asked, confused.

“You told me if you ever asked to be spanked that I should shoot you,” Dean reminded him.

“Wow. Look at me, then,” Michael said softly. “Maybe it’s growth?”

Dean felt weird about it, off-center, like the decision to turn Michael’s ass red was the wrong choice, but he did it anyway. And as his palm stung and Michael writhed on his lap, Dean clawed his way out of his own brat and found his alpha furious at himself, furious at Michael, at Cas, at a sea of thugs who’d threatened his mate’s life and forced a terrifying, irrevocable change. He spanked Michael methodically, powerfully, scrunching his nose into a snarl as he struck. Michael whimpered and clung to the comforter. Dean shifted to drop Michael’s right leg to the floor, and he attacked Michael’s inner thighs as if punishing his own brat.

He was still at it when Cas returned, sweaty and bright red. Cas raised a brow at them, but he didn’t intervene. He chivvied April back into motion in the bathroom where she’d stalled, and he showered the two of them clean.

Dean, back in his Secondary, poured his fear and his anger down his arm into his strikes, knowing full well that it was horribly unfair for Michael to bear the brunt of Dean’s emotions, but never had Lupin hierarchy been fair. Michael Released with an audible pop and a shout, and he cried shamelessly, kicking his legs against the assault.

Dean felt himself swinging back to balanced in his head, in his body, in his psyche, and he slowed to a stop, exchanging painful strikes for comforting caresses. Michael purred beneath him.

The Omega turned his body a little so he could look back up at his mate. “Still think I don’t need you?” he asked rhetorically. Dean slapped his ass.

“Come on, Sir,” Dean goaded. “Breakfast. Am I on my knees this morning?

“I’d like that,” Michael told him seriously. “Will you Sub for me?”

“Always,” Dean agreed with a pinch to Michael’s inner thigh.

“Ouch! Seriously? We’re having a moment here!” Michael slid off and found his feet with both hands rubbing his ass, rubbing between his legs. How did Dean even reach those spots with any force? Dean grinned at him. “Brat,” Michael accused.

“Hey.” Dean reached out and grabbed Michael’s hand, leveraging himself to his feet. “I hear you, Michael. I hear you about giving Omegas a voice. It’s a shift for us, man. But you’re right. I want to hear your input. We need it. It’s time. I want you and April to have a say in your own battle. Let’s figure out what that looks like.”

“That’s all I ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, although my platform is tiny in comparison to some, let me just add my voice to the pulsing thrum that's all around, finally bringing people together in shared purpose. Black lives matter. Racial injustice is so rooted in this country that digging it out may never be possible entirely. But we have to keep at it. No justice, no peace.
> 
> My commitment is to keep watch over the institutions that pay lipservice to justice when the eyes of the world are on them but have a history of doing nothing lasting once the roars die down. Holding these institutions accountable to change is something we've never effectively done. Let's stay on their asses.
> 
> Love to the Pack.


	15. Thursday, February 7, 2019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disappointment for Gabe and Kali. A Pack meeting that's mostly fluff because I like it when my Pack runs like a well-oiled machine. And a glimpse into what it takes to balance the mysterious Cain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning in end notes...

NOW:

He cut a cold and lonely figure against the darkening sky, sitting curled in on himself in the middle of the picnic table’s bench, facing the mirrored stillness of the duck pond. The solitude he sought fit the cold air and the crystal clarity of the twinkling stars, those that flared bright enough to pierce through industry and modernity and an abandonment of the sacred cycle separating day and night. Gabriel was a lone wolf in the wrong century, on the wrong continent, out of phase with his roots and his people. All expression melted from his face, leaving behind lax defeat and eyes so familiar with grief that he needed no voice to communicate his loss.

He wore an old handmade shawl of his mate’s making. And he shivered because it wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

His fist curled around a plastic stick, poking ignobly from either end of his hand.

Sarah approached slowly through the crunchy grass. She expected him to send her away. Certainly, everything about his posture spoke of a desire to be left the fuck alone. But she had to check. 

Gabe was family now.

“I brought you a coat,” she told him, stopping opposite of the table where he wouldn’t have to hide the devastation on his face. “You’ll catch pneumonia. Gabe, please.”

Sarah watched a ripple run down his back. A straightening. A cowl pulled over, metaphysical but almost visible. If she could have seen his eyes, she would have caught the moment his mask altered the light reflecting there. He sighed, lifting his shoulders and resettling them at a more respectable angle.

He turned his head slightly. “Thanks.”

Sarah took that as permission, and she picked her way around the table, handing him the coat and taking a cold seat beside him.

He huffed, looking at the coat in his hand. “Anyone else would have laid it across my shoulders,” he remarked. “I’m Omega, you see.”

She chuckled humorlessly, leaving him to shove cold arms into his coat on his own.

“How’s the class going?” Gabe asked, beating her to the opening topic.

Sarah stared at him for a moment and then decided to go with it. “It’s going well. We’re hobbled with the restriction that we can’t do any more demos with our students. We can’t really offer them anything they couldn’t get off the internet, but Sam’s trying to make up the difference with a lot of inside information.”

“Thought Alpha was going to win you some legislation that allows classroom contact,” Gabe observed with his eyes on the cattails at the pond’s edge.

“He’s working on it. Legislation is glacially slow. And even if they change the laws, it’ll take time to implement. It could still be years.”

“Why this, Sarah?” he asked pointedly. He turned to face her. “Why this class? Aren’t there more important aspects between our species that need attention? What about assaults against wolves by apes? Isn’t that more pressing than arming alpha apes to smack their subordinates around?”

Sarah frowned. Her jaw dropped slightly. “I…I suppose. But I’m not qualified to take on that battle. Not yet, at least. This class, it fits with my dissertation. It’s a stepping stone. No one’s trying to claim it’s going to fix everything. But the more we apes understand where wolves are coming from, the less we’ll block you getting your packs established.”

Gabe nodded, worked his jaw, and turned back to face the water. Ancient light, caught in the webbing of his amber irises, shone for a moment on its journey from the sun to ricochet off the moon, through frigid empty space, refracting in the physicality of the atmosphere, reflecting from Gabriel’s timeless eyes and on into the depths of the pondwater where microscopic algae waited to capture it like fish in a net and exchange it for movement and heat. Gabe’s eyes flashed, and Sarah felt ephemeral in his presence. Gabe wasn’t _of_ this moment. He was ancient somehow. She’d never seen eyes quite like his before. They were whiskey-amber, not brown, seeming to embrace Omega gold even during staid moments. In his eyes, the metaphysical whirled, so close to being touchable that Sarah could almost smell the scent of the ineffable links binding Gabriel to his family.

“Apes are clueless,” he grumbled, looking down at his lap.

Sarah chuckled again, a little uncomfortable. “I can’t argue with you there,” she admitted. “But they’re trying, Gabe. And they’re learning. It’s very rewarding to see their brains click over. Some of us get it.”

He rolled his eyes.

Sarah eyed the rigid stick in his hand and then averted her gaze. They sat in silence as the moon rose, a tug upon one of them, a mere illumination to the other.

“How’s the dissertation coming?” he prompted.

“I’m getting there. Close to the ‘EBD’ point.” She clarified at his frown. _”’Everything But Dissertation’._ Most of it’s written. I need to finish up my observations with Jess and Michael. And now with Michael’s new evolution, I have to factor that in with how the Pack supports his Secondary. I plan to make the case that he’s only got access to ‘The Voice’ now because his Omega is getting everything it needs from his mate and the Pack. I’m kind of stuck on how to present evidence for that assessment – on what counts as evidence. It’s tougher since he’s unique than it would be if I had more subjects to compare him to.”

Gabe nodded absentmindedly, barely listening. Sarah reached across and laced her fingers with his, squeezing his empty hand. His chin quivered, but she pretended not to see it.

“Don’t give up hope, Gabriel,” she advised quietly. A chilly breeze lifted the hair on his brow.

“Ah, the optimism of youth,” he quipped caustically back. He opened his hand and looked down at the drugstore test stick. “If young people had any idea what’s in store for them down the road…” He paused and redirected himself. “But if they did, no one would be brave enough to try for anything. It’s gotta be how it is, I suppose, or we’d have gone extinct eons ago.”

Sarah had no reply to that. She turned at a crunch of stiff grass behind them. Castiel cleared his throat and held aloft a thermos and a stack of plastic cups. Gabe released Sarah’s hand and swept his feet over the bench to face the table and his approaching brother. Cas took the bench opposite the two of them and handed cups out. Gabe inspected his, turning it judgmentally.

“Multi-billionaire can’t afford real teacups?” he griped.

He caught Cas by surprise, drawing a frown from Cas who looked over his own cup in surprise. What difference did it make? Didn’t the tea taste the same? Cas’ frown turned to a scowl, and he snatched Gabe’s back out of his hand before twisting open the thermos and doling out a portion. “Drink it or pour it over your head. I don’t care. I thought you could use some company.” He held the warm cup out, then added, “Kali talked to me.”

“Oh,” Gabe answered. He took the cup and held it in one hand. He glanced down to his lap, down at the plastic strip in his other hand. With no warning, he turned and flung the test strip into the duck pond where it broke the surface into concentric ripples and then bobbed back up to float serenely.

“I’ll thank you not to trash the property, Omega,” Cas chided. 

Gabe laughed. God, it hurt to laugh. His face crumpled a bit. He hid by lowering his head and scowling back down at his lap while Cas offered to fill Sarah’s cup with steaming red tea.

Sarah sipped, blowing steam across the surface.

The brothers communed in a place Sarah couldn’t reach. The wind ruffled their hair and stole wisps of steam from the surfaces of their cups. The moon won her freedom from the bare skeletal clutches of grasping winter branches at the property’s perimeter. Sarah watched silently, glancing back and forth from blue eyes to gold, noting when the hue in Gabe’s eyes slipped from amber to full gold. He shook his head, negating whatever Castiel wordlessly asserted. Cas reached a hand across, and Gabe shot his own out to clutch his brother.

“Try again next cycle, Gabriel,” Cas said at last. A simple imperative that sent Gabe’s mourning into utter despair.

“No. We’re done.”

“Give it some time.”

“I said we’re done.”

“Gabe, you’re torturing yourself. This isn’t your fault. It’s no one’s fault. But there are options. Kali’s young enough to be a candidate for fertility treatments. Hell, we adopted two already. Don’t try to tell me those boys aren’t Pack. Found family is still family.”

Gabe’s eyes glazed over. He shook his head slowly again. “The Universe is telling me something, Alpha,” he muttered. “I upset the balance years ago. It’s gotta swing back. I’m not meant to be a father. I was supposed to be a mother, but I spoiled that plan. The worst part is I spoiled it for Kali too. God, Cas, I was so stupid to marry her. What was I thinking? When am I ever going to learn my place? When am I going to stop thinking I can have…”

“Of all the self-absorbed, pathetic drivel,” Cas shot back. “Get over yourself, Gabriel. The Universe isn’t trying to send you a message that it wants you drowning in mud! You two have a glitch in your reproductive capacity. So? Millions of people have crap that goes wrong with their bodies every day. No one gets a smooth road from cradle to grave. If you were meant to be a mother, you wouldn’t have had a beta woman as your True-Mate in the first place. There is no ultimate design – only chance and circumstance. What a pile of horseshit!”

Gabe dropped his brother’s hand. His eyes flashed angry. “What do you know? What have you ever lost that you couldn’t buy back? How many times have you tried to stand up straight and proud and had the Universe crush you under its heel? Am I not trying hard enough for you? Am I supposed to be unquenchable? Why? For you? Because I’m your big brother, and you need me unbreakable? Fuck you, Castiel. It’s not your heart that breaks every cycle. I can’t do it again. I’m done. You hear me? Sometimes, even in the face of our best hopes, the Universe says no. Some people don’t get everything they ask for. I know you can’t relate to that, but believe me, it sucks, and there’s a limit to how many times a person can beg for one simple blessing and be laughed at by the cosmos before he just can’t fucking ask again. I may be a fucking joke to the universe, but I have some dignity left. Fuck you.”

Cas leaned low over the table and snatched his brother’s hand back. “Then stop _asking_, Gabe. Take it out of the Universe’s hands. Let me…”

_”NO!”_

“Damnit, Gabriel.”

Sarah looked stricken. She reached a hand out toward where the two men’s hands trembled and clutched. “Cas, now’s not the time.”

“Mind your own business,” he spat, and she startled back in her seat. “I’m sick of the defeatism. I’m sick of having to wade in and collect the towel he keeps throwing in. What have _I_ lost? Do you really want to go there, Gabe? I know what it feels like to lose a son before I ever knew him, same as you. Marina was my family too, Omega. I watched my father stroll right past me as if I was a part of the furniture, so desperate to escape the agony of the same crushing weight I had to learn to control by myself that he didn’t even see me, a scared twelve-year-old kid who needed a dad. I lost my childhood that day, Gabe. I had to become father and mother and Alpha to you when I was twelve years old. I had to sacrifice my youth to figuring out how to muzzle a nightmare. And I’ve got scars from that fight, Gabe, scars you can’t see, scars that I’ll carry forever. Do you have any idea how many times I nearly chose the same exit Father did? How many times I despaired ever learning to tame it? But we don’t get to give up, Omega! I don’t and you don’t.”

Gabe wilted, exhausted. “No,” he said weakly. “I can’t do it again. I’m not giving up on my marriage, Cas. I’m not crawling into a cave and pulling a blanket over my head. I’ll devote everything to this Pack because this family you found is the best thing I’ve had in a long time. But you can’t make me pursue parenthood when it’s ripping my heart out over and over again. I’m not adopting. I’m not signing off on fertility treatments. We’re not going to find a surrogate. You hear me? You don’t decide this for us. And we’re done.”

“Will you at least consider putting your decision off for a while?” Cas prodded. “I know you were both hopeful this round. You’ve both had quite a blow. It’s going to take time to digest.” 

“Cas, brother, read my fucking lips. I’m. Done. You want a bigger pack so bad, you go make some more pups. You’re good at it.”

Cas lowered his head in defeat and drew a long breath in through his nose. He squeezed his brother’s hand and then released it. “Will you please come inside? It’s too cold to sit out here.”

“Of course, Alpha. Whatever you say, Alpha. Would you like me to bend over and let you strap my ass for talking back, Alpha?”

Cas set his jaw and shook his head, standing up and swiping his thermos from the table in one motion. “Bring the cups with you when you come,” he added tersely. “I’d hate to lose priceless family heirlooms.”

“Jesus, you two,” Sarah mumbled. Cas didn’t pause. He stomped back up the incline toward the side entrance of the house, dumping the remainder of his tea on the lawn and muttering acidly to himself. Sarah half stood, but Gabe put a hand on her arm.

“Let him go. We aren’t going to be any good for each other right now. He’s got other fish to fry, and all I’m going to do is piss him off further.” Gabe sat staring at the house, bathed in security lights. He could hear faint strains coming from April’s piano. His index finger and thumb traced a line across his lower lip. His eyes had faded back to a muted yellow-amber. Sarah drained her cup and collected Gabe’s as well, stacking them. He glanced at her.

“Regret signing on to this shitshow yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she replied with a nudge of her shoulder and a smirk.

Sarah shivered. Gabe wrapped his hands around hers and blew warm air into his cupped hands to warm them.

“Can I ask why?” She broke the silence. “Why not try a route that doesn’t rely on mother nature’s good will? It was good enough for Jess and Sam. Your brother can pull strings and have …”

“Stop,” he pleaded. “Stop right there. Just…stop. You ever really watched Jess with the twins? You think she’s forgotten who they are? Where they came from? What she’s lost? But she and Sam are young. They aren’t used up and riddled with bullet holes. They’ve still got resilience enough to hide that pain from their kids. Doesn’t mean they don’t feel it. Just means they can stuff it in a box so that it’s not the loudest fucking instrument in the band. Me? I’m all outta boxes, kiddo. I can’t do that to some poor kid who didn’t do a goddamned thing to deserve it.”

Sarah pulled her hands free and wrapped her arms around the Omega, resting her cheek on his shoulder. He froze for a breath and then reciprocated, holding her tight in the darkness.

“Whatever you need, Gabriel. I’m here.”

“Need a rewind button,” he grunted, stuffy as his sinuses fought the urge to well into his eyes and nose. “Got one of those?”

***************

Sam followed the music. He scooped Hank up into hands big enough to wrap the boy’s torso as he crossed through the foyer, relieving a beleaguered Eunice with a firm nod and a wink to thank her. Sam carried his son, adjusting the goggle-style glasses across his nose. Glasses on a twenty-month-old pup were an exercise in patience and persistence. Hank didn’t mind them, generally left them alone, but he was boisterous. It wasn’t like the things came with thumbtacks. Hank pointed toward the end of the hall where the Pack was beginning to gather. Sam caught movement down the perpendicular hall to his right, but by the time he looked, Kali had disappeared into her suite, closing the door firmly behind her.

“Is there news?” he asked quietly as Jess rose to meet him and lift her face for a kiss.

“News?” she asked.

Sam nodded down the darkened hallway, silent now.

“Oh.” Jess collected Hank, unconsciously straightening his glasses as she settled him on her hip. She shook her head sadly. 

“Damn,” Sam said under his breath. It hurt. There was a tightness under his ribcage. He wrapped an arm around his mate and drew her close, burying his nose in her hair. 

“Gabe said he’s not putting Kali through another round. He’s pulling the plug.” Jess spoke to Sam’s breastbone. 

“Mama! Down!” Hank wriggled his way free in a controlled slide down his mother’s body. She supported him until he plunked clumsy feet on the floor and then released him to scamper away to the open space beyond the piano where the other pups played. Jess let her mate hold her. Their bond fizzled and sparked in their heads, full of disappointments neither would be giving voice to. What was there to say? Had the result come out differently, it still would’ve hurt. But not like this. Something about a lonely pink stripe on a plastic stick felt like an unfathomable chasm in the Pack. It felt to Sam and Jess like a sticky, dense portion of that darkness oozed off their bodies, adding depth to a communal bereavement that no victory elsewhere would ever dent.

“Sam.”

Sam kissed the top of his mate’s head and nodded in acknowledgment of his brother’s summons. “Yeah. Coming, alpha.”

“You heard,” Dean confirmed.

“Just now. Are they sure? It’s early yet. Maybe it’s just not registering.”

Dean shook his head. “No dice. Doc says it’s no go.”

“Where’s Gabe?”

“Outside. Picnic table,” Dean told him.

“Alone?” Sam asked in surprise, peering into the darkness. The windows offered nothing but blackness and reflected cheerful light.

“Give him some time, man. He had his hopes pretty pinned on this round. He needs some time to himself.” Dean drew Sam into the room, heading toward the cart in the corner. He fumbled a few cubes into a tumbler and splashed a dose of the good stuff over them. He handed the glass to his brother.

Sam grimaced and looked around. He took the drink without really looking. “Michael could go out and sit with him. He probably needs another Omega. Doesn’t need to be alone, I know that much.”

“Cas said to leave him be for right now,” Dean advised. “Alpha’s spoken, Sam. Just leave it. We’re not gonna let him spiral. Michael’s on alert. Come on. Cas is prickly. He’s waiting.”

Sam took a sip, straining the cool liquor through his teeth before it coated the inside of his mouth and shifted from cool to warm. He followed his brother, counting heads as he crossed the room. Everyone but Kali and Gabriel was here, scattered about on the floor and furniture. Pups ambled about in the middle, ringed by adults who served as bumpers of a sort, shepherding them into a secure flock.

“J.T., hand that to me,” Cas corrected stiffly, holding his hand out for the toy his nephew had just pounded Kat’s hand into the carpet with while she protested at her highest volume. He took it from the wide-eyed pup and tucked it into his pants pocket before striding right on past. J.T.’s head pivoted, watching the Alpha leave with his prize. Kat took the opportunity to plant her palms in J.T.’s back and send him sprawling.

Michael swept his daughter off the floor and waved Sam across to comfort the boy. “Can we get on with it, Cas?” Michael asked. He chose a chair some distance from where Sam settled with a protesting J.T. “They’re getting restless. We need to get them bathed and in bed. Everyone’s here; everyone who’s coming.”

Cas nodded. He signaled April to stop playing, and she slipped off the bench and onto the floor where Jimmy, Emma, and Hank all scrambled toward her. Alex collected the toys his siblings abandoned and entertained himself with his new treasures.

Sam cuddled his son, commiserating with him and kissing his elbows in sympathy. Cas strolled by, casually handing Sam the wooden dowel he’d confiscated only moments before. Sam held it away from J.T.’s reach. “Do we hit people with our toys, John Thomas?” he prompted.

“Won’t, Daddy. Please?”

“Tell Kat you’re sorry.”

J.T. frowned across the distance. “She hurted me,” he protested, baffled.

“I understand that,” Sam told him patiently. “I saw. She was wrong to push you. But you were wrong too when you hit her hand. Do you want your cousin to be hurt?”

“No,” the toddler admitted glumly.

“Then are you sorry that you hurt her?” Sam lowered his head until he and J.T. could both watch a sheepish Kat from the same level.

“Yessir.”

“Good boy,” Sam praised warmly. “Now tell Kat you’re sorry.”

J.T.’s eyes hit the floor. “Sorry, Kat,” he mumbled.

“Good boy,” Sam praised again, lifting him into a hug.

Michael had Kat facing outward. He smiled across at his nephew. “All right, sweetheart,” he picked right up. “Your turn. Let’s give J.T. a hug, shall we? Pushing him down on the floor is naughty, Punkin. He could have been hurt.” Kat scowled and shrugged her body in an attempt to extricate herself from Michael’s grip, but he had her fast. He crossed quickly to where Sam held J.T. on his lap. Michael made a spectacle of hugging his nephew, helping Kat whether she wanted the hug or not. J.T. giggled and Kat squealed in protest, kicking her feet fruitlessly.

Michael laughed as he pulled her free. “If you don’t want to have to hug a sorry, don’t push people,” he reasoned firmly. To J.T., Michael explained, “Kat’s too little to say the words, champ, but she knows what she did. She’s not going to get away with being mean. Don’t you worry.” He wasn’t especially concerned about presenting too stern a face for the pups in their misbehaviors. Not yet. The reins would grow tighter as they got older, but for now, simple consequences spoke louder than a harsh correction. And Kat hated to be manhandled. It was a fair consequence.

Alex followed when Michael took his chair again. As he climbed into Michael’s lap, Kat escaped back to the floor.

Cas waited beside the piano with a tablet in his hand. “Are we ready?” he asked. Was that an air of impatience? Sam cuddled J.T. close. Six pups under two years of age in the room, and the Alpha expected a quiet audience? Sam shared a look with April. They might get lucky, but more likely, Castiel’s meeting would be awash with unavoidable interruptions.

Portia trotted up to Sam’s knee and nosed at J.T.’s hand until the pup wriggled free to play with the dog. April slipped her shirt up over her head, baring her nursing bra, and enticed Emma and Jimmy with their favorite targets. Michael followed suit, silencing Alex for the moment. Hank watched, mesmerized at Michael’s knee, stroking Alex’s hair in a soothing, nurturing mimicry of a parent. Kat ignored everyone to sulk with her face hidden in the corner of a sofa, chewing on the end of her sleeve.

Cas leaned down and brought her up, bouncing her with her back to his chest and an arm under her little bottom. Her feet dangled. 

He cleared his throat. “I’ll make this quick. We have a lot going on in the next week, and our usual Friday Pack dinner won’t include the whole Pack. Thank you all for making yourselves available tonight.” Cas met everyone’s eyes, turning at the last to include Cain, standing like a bodyguard behind the Alpha’s left shoulder. Cain nodded.

Cas turned his attention to Sam. “From all reports, the Chicago convention was a rousing success. Registrations are up. Violent incidents are down. Do you two have anything of note to add?” Cas cut his eyes to Dean with his brows up. “Anything we need to be aware of?”

Dean licked his lips and looked to Sam. Sam chuckled. “No, sir,” Sam answered. “Was our smoothest Con yet. The only issue is running short on space. Charlie is looking at convention center venues for next year instead of hotels. We need more room. Dean’s seminar on the new college coursework from his book was a hit, Cas. People are hungry for detailed information. We’re seeing a rash of new Pack registrations in each city we’ve visited following every convention. We’re going to watch Chicago closely. All in all, it looks good. Real good.”

Sam left Dean’s tantrum out. Michael knew about it, but it was over and dealt with now, and Sam had promised to let it lie unless Dean showed symptoms of needing his husband involved. So far, Dean acted solid. Some things didn’t need a federal case made, especially not this close to the end of Dean’s two weeks of obligatory morning swats. But Sam caught the speculative look Cas shot at Dean. He knew something must’ve happened. Sam was out of it though. He was keeping his promise to his brother. The rest was between Dean, Cas, and Michael.

Cas nodded, satisfied. “Good work, boys,” he complimented. “Get your numbers to Donna. We’ve got a budget deadline coming fast, and she needs the receipts. Congratulations on another record-breaking convention season. It will be refreshing to have you home every weekend. Please remember, we’re adding Keller content next season. It’s going to get far more complicated to coordinate. Let’s keep the momentum going.”

Dean grinned. “And here you thought the conventions were a waste of time.”

Cas smiled back and nodded. “I’m happy to be wrong, love. They really are a triumph. Our ability to get messages out directly to our people is invaluable. You were absolutely right, and I was wrong. Thank you for your persistence.”

“Dude, in front of witnesses and everything,” Dean laughed. “I’ll mark my journal.” Dean feigned a stylus and a notepad: _”February seventh,”_ he joked. _”Alpha admitted he was wrong about something…”_

Cas laughed gamely, then held a hand up to quiet the murmuring room. “Put a star next to that entry, Dean. It will be one of very few. Moving on. We have a birthday imminent.”

“Alex turns one in two days,” Michael told the room. “Don’t you, Ace?” The pup ignored his mother, intent on draining every drop.

“Yes,” Cas agreed. “And unfortunately, we won’t all be home to celebrate. So, while we will be marking the date with a special dinner, I’ve decided to postpone his party until after the weekend so April and Cain can participate. Birthdays are important in this Pack. Where possible, I want us all in attendance.”

“I’ll arrange everything, sir,” Michael agreed. “I have some plans for toddler-friendly activities. But we can keep this one small. Alex doesn’t care yet.”

“Good. Thank you, Michael.” Cas consulted the tablet he had set on April’s piano, thumbing across it and typing swiftly with one hand. “April, you and Cain fly out to Los Angeles tomorrow morning. You’re with me tonight. I intend to send you off fully Balanced.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cas turned to address Cain. “Is her schedule in Los Angeles firmly set? I don’t want any uncertainty. No empty space that might allow a spiral to take root. She needs to know from moment to moment where she’s supposed to be and what she needs to focus on. You’ve woven in enough breaks to see to her stability?”

Cain, channeling an army quartermaster giving a daily report, answered crisply. “Yes, Alpha. We’re all set. A link to her schedule is on my calendar. It’s a good mix of work and down-time. I think she’ll enjoy the gown fitting. I’ve set that in between studio sessions. If it turns out to be a stressful engagement for her, I have the flexibility to postpone the second work session.” Cain spoke with confidence. He glanced at April, but he spoke to Castiel. “You, Dean, and Michael will join us Sunday morning. It’s only a couple of days of separation. In any other event, I would hasten to remind you that she’s been successfully separated from you for far longer. But this is the Grammys. It’s bound to be nerve-wracking. We’ll make it a point to check in with you frequently.”

“Thank you,” Cas said. “I’m more of a nervous wreck than she is, and I appreciate the consideration. How closely will she be tied to Nicholas? She needs breaks from him. He’s a terrible influence.”

Cain smiled a rare show of amusement. “I’ve got Nick on a very short leash, sir. The two of them won’t be alone together at all. But I promised him he could help her engage with several collaborative connections. It’s why we’re flying in early, after all. But where I am not immediately available, Mark will be there. Nicholas isn’t going to lead her into mischief.”

Cas grimaced for a second but reined himself swiftly in. “That man,” he added. “Sometimes I don’t know whether to clap him on the back or wring his neck. Don’t trust him for a second, Darius. Everything you know of brats, multiply that by twenty where Nicholas is concerned.”

“I know him well, Alpha. We’re associates from way back. He won’t be pulling anything over on me.”

“See that he doesn’t,” Cas told the alpha with a world of dark promise on his face.

“No, Sir,” Cain replied calmly. Cas held his eye for a moment longer than was comfortable. When he transferred his gaze to his mate, she was blushing.

“Do you understand me, April?” Cas asked. “You’re not a child. If Nick suggests anything that you know I would not approve, your ass is on the line as well as his. I expect Cain to correct you, and you’ll answer to me as well.”

“Yes, Alpha,” she cooed, sparking a hot flush high on his cheeks and a dilation of his eyes that was apparent all the way across the space to where Sam sat with Jess.

Michael cleared his throat.

“Yes,” Cas agreed with a start, breaking his eye-fucking and reverting his attention to his tablet. “Yes. Which brings us to Sunday evening. The after-party Nicholas is hosting begins at four o’clock. The ceremony will be live-streamed since each nominee is allowed only one guest. Dean and I have made a decision about our attendance on Sunday. Please bear with me. Let me explain…”

Sam sat up straighter, looking around and noting that everyone seemed to be frowning. Explain? What was there to explain?

“We have decided that I will escort my husband to the after-party. Cain will join us once he’s handed April’s custody over to the event security team. Cain, you’ll be sure to keep both eyes on her between the limo and the venue door and remain a close enough distance to intervene should her safety be in question at any point before she enters the theater. Stay off-camera, please. It’s critical that April appear not to be heavily guarded.”

“Yes, sir. I have my route mapped. I can parallel her from just behind the cameras.”

“Good.”

“Alpha?” April asked in confusion. “You’re not coming? But…you’re my mate.”

Cas smiled softly. “I’m not sending you in alone, my kitten. Michael will be your escort.”

Everyone froze. “Michael?” she asked, seeking clarification. “Two Omegas? Together without an alpha? Without a beta, even?”

Michael’s frown deepened. “Castiel…”

“Yes, Michael? Do you not wish to accompany April to her first Grammy award ceremony? I won’t force you. I assumed you would enjoy it.”

Michael adjusted Alex on his lap. The pup was half-asleep, but he scrabbled for the nipple with his mouth gaping and dribbling. Michael turned him and offered the other side. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to. I’d love it. But it’s not a good idea. If you don’t want to go with her, then surely the better choice is Cain. She needs an alpha…”

“No, she doesn’t,” Cas intervened stoutly. “Nick is bringing Jenn, as usual, so there will be an alpha close-by. But I’ve vetted the venue’s security. Most of the attendees are celebrities. All of them travel with bodyguards. All of them share the same vulnerabilities. How ridiculous is it to assume that Celine Dion can attend without her own security, but April Winchester needs a bodyguard?”

“Celine Dion, Alpha?” Dean quipped.

Castiel ignored his comment, but he dropped Kat into Dean’s lap. “I asked you to bear with me. Please understand, this decision isn’t arbitrary. Nor is it spur of the moment. This is part of a larger effort to demonstrate the competence of Omegas who are fully balanced by their home packs. Both of you have agreed to participate in that messaging. Both of you begged, in fact, to participate. Can anyone offer a single cogent argument as to why April shouldn’t walk into that auditorium on the arm of her boyfriend?”

“Just the two of us?” Michael gaped. He stared at April. She stared back, speechless.

“We will be watching from Nick’s party, and win or lose, we’ll see you directly after,” Cas added.

No one said anything for several moments.

“Pete?” Michael prompted. “It’s your nomination. It should be your choice.”

She tore her eyes from Michael and addressed Cas. “Are you sure, sir?”

Cas softened. He knelt in front of her, catching Idgie when the pup vaulted for him. “Michael’s right, Kitten. It’s your decision ultimately. If you aren’t ready for this, we’ll put it off until your next Grammy nomination.” His devout faith that there would be a next time anchored the tone of his statement. April had no defense against him like this.

Jimmy fussed in April’s lap, rubbing his eyes. April pulled him to her shoulder to snuggle without breaking from her Alpha’s eyes. Sam watched, feeling the warmth, the trust between mates. He reached for his mate’s hand. Jess felt it too. She dropped her head to her mate’s shoulder, looking on with a soft kind of reverence.

“You think I’ll get another one?” April asked at a whisper.

Cas chuckled softly and cradled her cheek in his palm. “You’re just getting started, beautiful.”

She blushed again and looked at Michael. “Will you be my escort, Michael?” she asked shyly. “I won’t win. But I’d like to have you there all the same. You’ve supported every step I’ve taken. And you do look amazing in a tuxedo.”

Michael laughed. “I’d be honored,” he answered. They both flushed again and looked away at the same time, shy with the whole Pack’s eyes on them. “Glad Gabe isn’t here,” Michael mumbled. “He would never let me live this down. Think I felt less awkward asking a senior alpha to prom when I was a freshman.”

“So, we agree?” Cas prompted as he stood back up and resumed his post by the piano. “This is both a personal and a Pack matter. If anyone feels reservations, I need to hear them now. Dean?”

“It’s a risk,” Dean told them, more a catalogued statement than an argument. He felt that bringing the arguments that they’d unearthed in private out into the open with the full Pack might absolve him of arranging Michael’s participation without the Omega’s input once again.

“There’s little risk to their safety,” Cas disagreed.

“No, not that. What if she has an anxiety attack? What message would that send? It could spiral into a full-blown fall in public. This could blow up in our faces.”

“Michael can help her through if that happens,” Cas argued. “He’s nearly through his classwork. He’s logged months of clinical work.”

“You want him to treat her like a patient? At the Grammys?” Dean returned, unsettled.

“Dean, the premise behind treating patients is the same as responding to a Secondary attack at home. If he has the skills to handle it in clinic, he can do it anywhere, with anyone. You know me better than to imagine I would let my mate scurry off somewhere while she’s unsupported. Michael knows what to do.”

“Are you expecting him to speak to the reporters?” Dean asked.

“He’ll be at her elbow along the red carpet,” Cas responded. “I expect him to encourage April to stand in the spotlight she earned, but yes, if they address him directly, which I fully expect some of them to do, he should answer.”

Dean bit his lower lip. His commitment to Michael’s public campaign was being tested, and though he’d already signed off on the plan, things looked far more dangerous with Michael and April looking on. He glanced at his mate. Sam had his lips pressed closed, his eyes the only part of him in motion. Tension oozed into every space. Dean and Michael disappeared inside their bonds, both of their faces twitching with the friction. At last, Dean took a deep breath and broke the connection. “I’m with you, guys,” he confirmed. “Scares me. But he does look fucking amazing in a tux.”

“Jesus, Dean. Language!” Michael griped.

Dean grinned.

“New Pack rule!” Castiel announced spontaneously. “What number are we on?”

“We have seven, sir,” Cain answered in a sycophantic purr that pulled a possessive growl right out of Dean.

“Seven. Right. Rule number eight. No swearing in the presence of children.”

“Seriously?” Dean protested. “What consequences?”

“The usual, Dean,” Cas replied smoothly. “I will allow consequences to be at the Top’s discretion, but I advise that corporal punishment is my personal preference.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Fine. Be sure to tell Gabe. He’s worse than I am.”

“I will see to it,” Sam assured his brother.

“Thank you, sir,” Michael said with a smug look to Dean.

“Wait, wait. What counts as a swear word?” Dean interjected just as Cas began to move on.

Cas rolled his eyes. “There’s a quick way to answer that, Pet. Keep swearing and find out.”

“That’s not fair! What about ‘damn’? Can I say ‘bitch’? ‘Ass’?”

Everyone turned at the voice from the doorway. “Think of it this way, Dean,” Kali added blandly. “Any word you expect Michael to be proud to hear his pups repeat back to us as their first word is probably fine.”

Sam stood up and strode across to wrap his arms around her. His sniffle echoed off the high ceiling. Kali melted into him. Everyone waited patiently, hearts mourning with their Packmate’s loss. Sam released her after a while. He pressed back with his hands tight on her shoulders. She granted him a watery smile and a nod. Sam ushered her in with a hand across her shoulders, setting her beside Michael and leaving her with a kiss to the top of her head. She squeezed his massive hand as he left. Michael let Alex amble across his lap to his aunt. She touched the soft curling hair on his head. He touched her cheek with a curious expression, studying her face.

Cas gave her a moment to find her footing, and then he cleared his throat and drew everyone’s attention back. “All right. While we’re gone, Samuel, you’re in charge. I expect to be notified if anything comes up that deserves my attention. Please use your best judgment. You have my full support and my trust.”

“Thank you, sir. You can depend on me,” Sam answered. He felt surprisingly proud to hear Castiel’s confidence. They would only be gone for a few days, but somehow, being left with the helm felt momentous, even with the unlikelihood of any debacles while the alphas were away.

“The award ceremony is on Sunday night. Monday, all of us have engagements in L.A. We’ll be back on Tuesday. April and I will celebrate our anniversary shortly after, which of course means an impending cycle for us both. Advance apologies to the Pack if either of us grow snippy in the next week.” Cas grinned at his mate. She snickered, turning her focus on re-situating her shirt and encouraging the pups to shuffle off and play. The pups would get cranky soon, but if she could keep them awake a little longer, they’d make it to bath time and then crash hard when their pajamas went on.

“Dean, Michael, if you two would like, April and I agree that you’re welcome to join us after day one of our cycle. That’s assuming all of your responsibilities have been met, and you’ve secured care for the pups.”

Michael laughed. “Hear that, Cinderella?” he joshed toward his mate. “We can go to the ball if we finish our chores.”

Cas grunted and turned on him. “You’re already attending the ball, Omega. Mouth off enough to irritate me, and you won’t be going anywhere. It’s a good faith invitation. Accept it or don’t, but don’t push me.”

“Sorry, sir,” Michael said. He lowered his face with a frown. In the week since his explosive introduction to Omega compulsion, Michael devoted himself to hanging on Castiel’s every word. He’d been attentive to guidance and committed to cementing his roles, both inside and outside the house until each designation began to flow smoothly, one to another. And Cas had noticed. The Alpha met Michael’s newly minted dedication with a matching commitment to guiding him. Yesterday, for example, as Michael approached the alphas with the Q4 Pack expenditures report, tabbed and highlighted for easy reading, Cas halted him in the doorway.

“On your knees, Omega!” he’d snapped without warning.

Michael’s eyes hardly widened as he dropped gracefully to the floor with his folder still in his hand, and content eyes on his Pack Alpha. Michael waited calmly, no sign of impatience or undue submission, simply a peaceful, reverent deference befitting an Omega in the presence of authority. Cas had observed his posture, scenting the air while Dean watched on without comment. And then he’d nodded. Michael rose just as smoothly and carried on with his report, unharried.

Simple praise followed, and a tender touch to Michael’s wrist. And that was it.

When Dean brought the moment up later with Michael in private, the Omega smirked. He said that the knowledge that what his wolf was capable of, that in need he could wield a nearly supreme power, allowed him to release the struggle against everything his Omega needed. Simply knowing that his Pack acknowledged and honored his Tertiary strength took the pressure off his other designations.

Dean thought he understood, even as counterintuitive as it might seem. Dean experienced something very similar with people who saw him as Deep alpha first and Sub second. Having that groundwork as footing let him show a more vulnerable side when he needed to without risk of imprinting an impression of weakness. It freed him.

Michael had shifted right from kneeling placidly to reporting the Pack’s year-end net gain so smoothly, he might have been a veteran at Omega balance. All of the discomfort at being Omega seemed to evaporate overnight, leaving him snarky, occasionally grumpy, often bossy, but unequivocally Omega.

“Any other business to discuss?” Cas moved on. “Dean?”

“I’m cool,” Dean assured him. “Oh. We need to save a couple of hours on Monday to Skype in to the Project O planning board’s meeting. Max has made real progress. It’s his first meeting at the helm. We need to be there to support him.”

“Add that to my calendar, please. Cain?” Cas prompted. The man had hardly moved, still in battle stance behind the Alpha with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I assume I’m in charge during your cycle?” he confirmed.

“Only while Dean’s likewise indisposed,” Cas told him. “Same as always. We’re not out of town though. I expect to be notified if anything untoward happens. I’m not a teenager. My Ruts don’t incapacitate me to a degree that makes me incoherent. Call me if you need me.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Anything else?”

“No, Sir.”

“Sam,” Cas prompted. “Anything we need to discuss?”

“Gabe’s sitting outside alone in the cold, sir. May I be excused to go check on him?”

“Please. Take him something hot to drink in case he refuses to return to the house.”

“Good idea,” Sam agreed, wasting no time in stepping over Portia on his way to a quick trip to the kitchen. She followed with her tail waving.

“Kali,” Cas continued. “Anything to add, dear?”

She shook her head mutely. Cas left her to her silence. He proceeded through each Pack-member in order of rank, addressing Kate before his own mate, a move that surprised the young Ozzie. She wasn’t Pack. It wasn’t her meeting. She had thought her attendance was as childcare alone. Kate had a habit of blending herself into the background whenever her presence was required in the public rooms. She never spoke unless spoken to, and even then she only uttered the barest minimum that was demanded of her.

“Nothing, Alpha,” she whispered toward her toes.

Cas paused on Kate for a beat. “Omega, while Dean is in Los Angeles, you may rely on Sam and Kali if you need anything. We won’t often leave you with no alphas in the house. It’s rare for all three of us to be gone at the same time. If you need an alpha in our absence, I’m leaving contact information for an alpha I trust. Ask for help if you need it. You’re not expected to power through if you falter. In fact, I won’t hear of it. I have a paddle with your name on it if we come home to find you in distress without your having notified anyone. Am I clear?”

“You, sir?” she asked nervously, looking to Dean. “Not my alpha?”

“Me, Omega. Dean is your foster, but I am Alpha.” His voice crackled with that indefinable compulsion that penetrated consciousness and activated instinct. His eyes offered no cushion, just steadfast solidity.

“Yessir,” she mumbled.

Kali got up and crossed to her, taking her hand. “We’ll be fine, Cas. Leave her therapy schedule with me, and I’ll see to it. I don’t have any pressing projects at work right now.”

Cas nodded. Kali could look after Kate, but Sam would be looking after Kali. She might find distracting herself by focusing on Omega care worked to get her mind off her disappointment, but she was in no condition to be left to her own devices. Kali wasn’t nearly as unaffected as she appeared, and she had Gabriel to support as well. Cas regretted sending Dr. Barnes off to Dallas to shore up the shaky leadership there. She had a way with distraught Omegas; had more than once proved essential in helping Gabe process the thunderstorm in his head. Cas had no doubt she could help Kali too. But she was gone.

Tessa, maybe?

“Kitten, sweetheart, I speak for the Pack when I wish you best of luck on Sunday. You deserve all the accolades. Anything to add before we adjourn?”

“Thank you, sir. No, nothing to add. Just, if we don’t get these little ones in bed soon, we’re going to have a six-way meltdown on our hands.” April hauled herself off the floor with Jimmy at her shoulder. “Jess, are you staying the night? We’ve got room in the tub for all of them.”

Jess replied tiredly, “Yes, Sam’s not going to leave Gabe until he’s sleeping. We’ll stay, run home in the morning for a change of clothes. We’ll just stay over the weekend. He’s needed here.”

“Off you go, then. Meeting dismissed. Thank you, everyone.” Cas helped situate little ones in secure arms, relieved to have managed a late meeting without losing out to weary pups or a spark of bickering between Dean and Cain. In short order, Jess carried Hank while Kali took J.T. April had both Jimmy and Emma. Kate took Kathleen wordlessly from Dean, avoiding his eyes, even when he rested a palm across the back of her neck for a moment and sent comfort down along his bond with her. Alex clung tightly to Michael.

“I won’t let you down, Sir,” Michael assured Cas as the ladies worked their way toward the nursery. “I know taking your place at the ceremony is about more than just which of us escorts Pete. And I know it’s a gamble. We’re going to play our roles well. We’re going to make you proud. I promise.”

Alex grumbled and rubbed his eyes, annoyed at too much grownup talk, impatient for his routine.

“I have no doubts whatsoever, Michael,” Cas told him with a gentle stroke along Alex’s head. “I trust you both. Off with you now. Our boy isn’t going to make it through his bath as it is. Good night, Ace. Be good for O-Pop. I’ll come up and tuck you in.”

Michael hesitated for a moment and then shyly left a chaste kiss on Castiel’s cheek before following the others down the long hallway toward the stairs. Dean smirked at Cas’ surprise. He chuckled good-naturedly and joined his husband, wrapping an arm around Cas’ waist. Cas touched the spot on his cheek and watched Michael disappear. That boy was full of surprises.

“Oh. Cain. A moment before you go, please,” Cas called as he broke from his musing to catch the alpha.

“Sir.” Cain turned and strolled back into the room.

“I need your assurance that you have arranged to see to your own balancing before you accompany my mate halfway across the country. To my knowledge, you’ve not scened lately, and your scent is spiky. Do I need to arrange something for you?” Cas was relaxed, standing easily in Dean’s half-embrace, but there was no missing the authority in his question. “You’re not flying until your scent evens out. That’s non-negotiable. I will intervene if I must.”

“Yes, Alpha,” Cain agreed, deferential as ever. “I have an engagement tonight, as it happens. I realize it’s getting late, but these fellows, they aren’t available during regular office hours. Strictly after hours. They all have day jobs, you see.”

“Pushing it kinda close there, aren’t you?” Dean frowned, looking at his watch. “Who are these guys? Private contractors?”

“Not contractors, no,” Cain told him, far less polite in his demeanor than when addressing Cas. “Friends of friends. It isn’t a business arrangement. Rather, it’s…mutually beneficial. A club with exclusive membership. Selective.” Cain’s eyes trailed across Dean’s shoulders before boldly meeting his eyes.

“I would feel better,” Cas told him. “If you hadn’t waited until the last moment. You two leave first thing in the morning. Can you at least assure me that you will be physically capable of meeting your responsibilities tomorrow? We don’t have time to nurse a wounded alpha.”

“Sir, with all due respect, waiting until the evening before a separation between you and your mate is your _modus operandi_ with April as well, is it not? I can promise you I’ve made my limits crystal clear to my compatriots. I shall be fresh and well-rested in the morning, and I’ll be fully balanced as well.”

“Do we know these guys?” Dean asked.

“Probably,” Cain answered. “Is there anyone in the region you don’t know? But if it’s all the same, alpha, and if I may be allowed a modicum of privacy, assuming you trust my judgment in selecting my own partners, I would very much prefer to keep my associates’ identities to myself.”

“Dean, leave him be,” Cas answered Dean’s not-yet-voiced retort. “He knows what we expect, and he knows there will be severe repercussions if he doesn’t live up to his responsibilities.” To Cain, he added. “I do trust your judgment. And I appreciate your preparations. Off with you, then. Enjoy yourself. Be safe. Text me when you get home, even if it’s very late. We’ll see you in the morning.”

Cain bowed his head with a stiff, formal dignity and reversed his way out like a butler.

Dean felt Cas take a bracing breath and steel himself.

“Gabe?” Dean asked, hoping to skip over the niceties and get to the point. He nudged his Alpha into motion, leaving the conservatory empty. Dean flicked the light off as they left.

Cas shook his head. “I want to, Dean, but I need to give him some space. I feel better knowing Sam’s with him. At least I know he isn’t going to harm himself tonight. Once the worst of the disappointment eases, I’ll set him up with a therapist again. Would you ask Tessa for recommendations? Now that Pam’s gone, I’m at a loss. She was so good with him.”

“Gabe’s a lot stronger than he used to be,” Dean reminded Cas. “He’s got a whole Pack at his back now, not just one brother. He’s going to get through this. Yeah, I’ll ask Tessa. Call Pam too. She’s bound to know someone suited to Gabe’s trademark-brand ‘snark and distract’ technique.”

“God, Dean, you should have seen him. He’s devastated. I don’t know why he’d set his hopes so specifically on this cycle, but he was convinced their bad luck was over. I was thrown right back to what it felt like to sit with him after his miscarriage – like there’s nothing left but a shell.”

“He’s still in there, man,” Dean stated. He turned Cas to face him at the foot of the stairs and set a palm on each of Cas’ shoulders. “He’s crushed, but he’s not broken. We’re going to see him through. Okay? Him and Kali both. He’s in the best hands in the world right now. Sam won’t let anything else happen to him tonight. Not tonight or tomorrow or any other day. Because he’s Sam Fucking Winchester, and he’s a fucking saint. You gotta trust that the Pack we built is solid enough to hold us up, Cas. Have some faith that we built it right. _This_ is what a Pack is for.”

“Yeah. I know. It hurts. I wanted this so badly for them. They’ve had enough of getting the shit kicked out of them. And I feel guilty every time Gabe looks after our pups. It’s not fair, Dean. It’s worse than unfair. It’s a fucking travesty. And I can’t fix it. There’s no reason I can find why they can’t get pregnant. Biologically, they’re both sound. It makes no sense.”

“Castiel James.”

“I know.”

Cas set his forehead against Dean’s and closed his eyes. “I know.”

“I love you so much, Cas. So damn much.”

“I love you too, Dean Michael.” Cas wrapped Dean’s name in affection.

“Go fuck my little sis into the mattress until her head spins, and then get some sleep,” Dean instructed. “She needs to be glowing for her fans this weekend. She’s gonna win a fucking Grammy, man. A Grammy. Can you believe it?”

Cas chuckled softly. “They won’t win, Dean. These things are less unpredictable than they appear.”

“I see,” Dean teased. “Send Michael to the one she doesn’t win so you can sit beside her when she does?”

Cas laughed and pulled back a ways, still close. “You’re on to me,” he admitted.

But Dean shook his head, falling into a thoughtful pause. “It’s a brilliant move, Alpha. No one will expect her to stroll down the red carpet accompanied by Michael. The whole world knows you’re her mate. Puts an exclamation point on every interview Michael’s done in the last week. Backs up your declaration that Michael’s more than her Pack Omega fuck-buddy, more than a side-piece. It proves they’re both serious about their relationship, that Omegas _can_ have a serious adult relationship, and it’s not about to tear the Pack in two. Be ready for the press to push back. They’ll be searching for a crack in our story. They’ll want to provoke you into a jealous rage. They’re going to come at us hard.”

“At us, yes,” Cas agreed as he mounted the stairs with Dean’s hand in his. “But not at the Omegas. Not yet, anyway. The press adores April and Michael, both. They’ll have a window of opportunity to get charm in over the cameras. Eventually, the gloves will come off, and they’ll be asked tough questions. But not yet. Right now, they’re the darling couple of the celebrity circuit. We have time.”

“How can you know that?” Dean challenged, trotting up the stairs to keep up.

“Intuition,” Cas told him. “Trust me.”

Cain passed them going the opposite way on the stairs. He winked jauntily at Dean as he slipped by.

“Prick,” Dean muttered under his breath.

***************

“Jesus, these guys don’t play,” Cain mumbled to himself as he stepped into the empty playroom in a costumed prison jumpsuit. He was wary of gimmicky roleplays, but he’d been assured they could make it feel real. For headspaces, he’d have to wait and see, but for detailed environmental staging, yeah, this place gave chills. The rental space, appointed for play in a hotel-like facility near the KU campus bragged full amenities and security staff. But although monitored for safety, it wasn’t run by the building management. Anyone could rent a room and outfit it however they liked. Cain’s connection had encouraged him to join this particular club, swore it would be just up his alley. 

He looked around. The room wasn’t cobbled together on the fly. It was a permanent fixture, with details hard-bolted down that indicated a commitment to a realistic presentation. They’d spared no expense to create a room that would foster a suspension of disbelief. It was an encouraging sign. Club dues paid for rent and equipment, not to mention the odd first-aid bill. Dues paid for costumes too, and Cain appreciated the commitment to authenticity.

The room was laid out like a scummy prison cell, larger than a real one but not by much. There was a long bench along one wall and a single drain in the concrete floor that collected a trickle of slimy water from a crack marring one wall. In the middle of the cell, a single, bare, stained queen-sized mattress lay haphazardly strewn. It looked like an afterthought. It was cold and joyless – ugly – in here. Cain drew his shoulders up and then rolled them back down again, seeking a headspace that embraced the room he was in, trying to forget that on the other side of that door was a warm, welcoming carpeted hallway with alpha monitors at either end. He told himself he was deep in the bowels of a backwoods county prison where inmates were left to fend for themselves and pecking orders established quickly. Brutally.

The door slammed open, and Cain jumped, spinning to face the threat.

“Twitchy fucker, ain’t ya?” 

“I hold my own,” Cain replied civilly with narrowed eyes. He assessed the man rapidly. Bulky and tattooed, the alpha moved like a cat, like he knew how to move, like danger itself.

The man smirked. “Is that right? We’ll see, won’t we. You get the skinny already? Normally, we’ll jump right in without all this jabber, but as it’s your first time, I’m gonna give you a quick intro.”

“I’ve read the leaflet,” Cain told him as the two began circling one another slowly. “I don’t need a bedtime story.”

The alpha laughed, throwing his head back. “I’m gonna love taking you apart, nube. You’re feisty. You wanna cut the bullshit? Let’s do it. You got a safeword?”

“Collette,” said Cain. He didn’t explain.

“Names aren’t usually allowed as safewords,” he was told, and Cain scoffed. If he ever scened with someone named Collette, he could change it, but that wasn’t likely to happen. He offered nothing further by way of response, still circling.

“Any questions?”

“Do the boys mind if I put up a fight?” Cain asked, watching his adversary’s eyes. Amusement met him again. Cain was beginning to tire of the patronizing humor in this jerk’s demeanor. What some men called play, Cain usually turned vicious. He had no use for playground equipment, feathers or wax or handcuffs. He knew what the club literature said, but he’d rarely encountered alphas as cold as he needed. “Don’t fuck with me,” he added. “I wouldn’t recommend underestimating me either.”

The amusement dissolved from his opponent’s face. “Long as you’re okay with the thunder you call down, bitch, you just do whatever you gotta. You understand me?”

“Hmm,” Cain replied noncommittally. “How many?”

“We decided to go easy on you, rookie. But I admit, the boys are hungry for fresh meat. Couldn’t tell them all no, now could we?”

“How many?”

“I got twelve outside the door clamoring for a taste of rookie ass. You think you can handle a baker’s dozen of us?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” Cain’s eyes spoke for him. A dangerous light sparked. Everything from the mold growing deep inside that filthy mattress to the cold concrete to the bright orange of both their jumpsuits took him there, and he was ready. He wasn’t in a roleplay. He was facing real peril, and he hardened his face to confront the danger.

The alpha across from him, Cain decided to nickname him “Tattoo,” slapped a flat hand on the door as he circled that way again.

“Do I get to know your safeword?” Cain asked, almost conversationally.

“Not something you need to worry about,” Tattoo said with an evil grin. “The monitors know it.” The door opened, revealing the biggest beta Cain had ever seen wearing a prison guard’s uniform, one that looked authentic as fuck, and a cowed line of orange-clad alpha prisoners shackled on an ankle chain, strung out like fish on a line, bound by their ankle cuffs. They walked in-step to keep from tripping. They filed in and stood in a line facing the back wall.. 

“Turn!” the beta commanded, and all twelve alphas rotated as one to face the room. “Sit!”

Cain licked his lips. He’d never been cowed by a beta in his life, but this dude brought chill bumps to his arms. He glanced toward Tattoo and found him cringing in the corner with his eyes on the floor. Cain took the hint. He backed slowly toward the far wall, turning his eyes, broadcasting with every muscle a nonthreatening stance.

The beta ignored him. He knelt at the end of the row of seated alphas and unclasped the chain from the end cuff before violently stripping it out with a hideous clanking. Cain jumped. He felt eyes on him. A surreptitious glance up at the alphas on the opposite wall proved the crawl of his skin correct. They were studying him. All of them. Cold eyes and lewd tongues met his brief glance. 

He was fucked.

Jesus.

Cain tasted the word ‘Collette’ in his mouth, remembering the feel of it on his tongue.

The beta stood back up, mindlessly coiling the chain around his fist. “Behave yourselves, boys. I don’t wanna have to hose blood outta here again. We just fucking cleaned up after that last poor wretch. You do that shit again and doc’s gonna run the fuck outta knee splints. You hear me?”

No one answered.

The guard hung the coiled chain on the door handle, then he turned his back to the door, crossed his arms over his chest, set his feet into an immovable stance, and stopped moving entirely, blending into the background and turning the feeling of peril up several notches, a wordless menace blocking the exit, lending believability to the space without saying another word. Tattoo was the first to shake himself off and saunter into the room.

A pale red-headed alpha at the end of the line called to him. “Fresh meat, is it? You taste him yet, Pidge?”

Pidge? Cain liked ‘Tattoo’ better, although, by the looks of these lowlifes, that nickname was meaningless. Not a one of them was unmarked.

“Nah,” Tattoo purred, easing closer to Cain. Cain stepped back. “No one’s ass is as sweet as yours, Jelly. I’m thinking of giving the nube a pass and sticking it where I know the meat is tender. You been our bitch a long time. I’m kind of a sentimental guy. I like my pussy well-used.”

“Cut the crap, Pidge, you promised! You said the first fresh meat that shows up, you’d move me up a peg. I’m done being the fuckhole! You promised!” Jelly was on his feet now, furious.

“Aw, punkin, you didn’t think I’d go breakin’ my word now, did you? I am gonna miss the taste of your sweet pussy though.” Tattoo leered at the alpha on the end for a moment, allowing his threat to find its mark before turning back to address Cain. “But you know, we gotta tame this bitch before we can taste him.”

“You touch me, I’ll break your legs!” Cain promised darkly.

“Feisty,” Tattoo jeered. “This is gonna be fun.”

No one else seemed eager to usurp Tattoo’s authority. He was clearly the Alpha, and he strutted, completely at ease in his domain. Cain watched everywhere at once, watched his back, calculated his chances if he dodged versus engaging when Tattoo jumped him. It was only a matter of time.

The beta guard ignored the imminent threat. He picked at his nails, bored.

Cain would get no protection from the guard. He was on his own. He sized up the row of riveted alphas waiting impatiently on the bench out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t take his eyes off the clear threat in front of him. He considered his chances of winning himself some allies, and discarded that thought just as fast. Some of them hadn’t even waited before freeing their cocks. They smelled blood, and they were right there, right there for it. Cain could smell the anticipation.

Fuck, he was in trouble.

His mouth went dry even as he found himself swallowing uncomfortably. He took a couple of steps backward, bumping into the corner.

“Going somewhere, bitch?”

“Fellas, let’s think about this, yeah? We don’t have to do this.” It was no good. He could have had their freedom in his back pocket and they wouldn’t have heard a word he said. The stench of alpha aggression strangled the already musty air. Cain’s eyes watered with it. He put his hands up.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will,” he warned. “I’m warning you. Don’t you fucking touch me. Last chance.”

“Ooh, last chance? What happens after my last chance, bitch? You got nowhere to run. You got no friends but me. You get me? I’m your friend, man. You and me. These dicks all do what I tell them. They’re not all nice guys like I am. I can protect you.”

“I don’t need your protection. I can look after myself.”

“Is that right?”

And then he moved. Cain found himself lying flat on his belly on the concrete with his face inches from the slimy water trail snaking to the drain. Four alphas held him down, and he never even saw it coming. He struggled, landing a hard elbow across the bridge of Mohawk’s nose. Blood spurted. Mohawk’s hands disappeared to clap over his face, but a new set took his spot at Cain’s shoulder. There were too many of them, and they were rabid. Nails scrabbled to rip his jumpsuit. He shouted in vain fury and struggled with everything he had. He managed to roll onto his back and sit up, tangling an arm into Crosseye’s upper arms and flinging him onto his back with a huff of breath leaving his lungs. Crosseye heaved silently, trying desperately to get air with the wind knocked right out of him.

With his legs freed, Cain kicked out, landing a couple of vicious kicks. He couldn’t see through the press of bodies, but he heard the screams. Someone was down. The bench cleared, and it was a melee.

Cain’s dick was so hard, it hurt, independent of the hands and elbows and shoulders grinding against his crotch as their grappling flipped and turned and sent bodies crashing into one another. He fought like his life was in peril. He fought with nails and sinew and hard muscle and gritted teeth. Sweat and spit flew. His knuckles bruised with each landed punch, but they never so much as slowed.

He was sweating even in the frigid air, and he was losing. Badly. There were just too many of them. They pinned him against the floor by his hips and shoulders. It took seven or eight of them, and Cain could at least take pride in having been no easy piece of meat. A steady stream of throaty growls issued from his throat, as red eyes scorched holes in his assailants. But as they all found better grips, huffing against the struggle, and his view cleared, Cain looked up from beneath the lank curtain of silver hair hanging in his eyes, he saw Tattoo nursing a bloody nose.

Rage burned in Tattoo’s eyes.

Shit.

Maybe he should’ve simply complied.

No, fuck that. Fuck all of it.

“Put him on the mattress. Face-fuckin-down!”

Cain shouted in impotent rage. He struggled. Goddamn, he struggled. But for every hold he threw off, another took its place. They dumped him unceremoniously on his belly on the disgusting mattress. Hard palms shoved his face down into the moldy fabric. It smelled putrid.

And then a ritual ripping of fabric, orange fabric, bared his ass, and he lost it. Cain turned feral, vicious. If he’d held any vestige of a memory that he was engaging in a roleplay, it evaporated when he felt cool air across his backside and vestigial memories engaged. He moved entirely on impulse. When the panic set in, Cain’s instinct kicked in, and he broke cheekbones and fingers, digging to gouge eyes out but never quite connecting.

His vision tunneled to a crimson focus.

It was a hell of a showing, but he was going nowhere. For as deeply ensconced as Cain was in his headspace, the alphas above him had more experience in this space, and they knew each other. They didn’t falter, even as real bones snapped.

Soon he lay panting again, sweating and aching on his belly with knees in his back and pinning his legs. His throat grew raw as he screamed impotent rage.

“You’re gonna pay for that,” Tattoo growled.

“What,” Cain growled back. “No one’s ever drawn blood before? Turns out you bleed just like the rest of us. You might wanna get that looked at.”

“Keep it up, bitch,” Tattoo spat. He paced behind Cain. Cain couldn’t see him. He didn’t like the blindness, but he was held fast. “Gonna call you Wolverine cause you spit just like a feral fuckin’ animal.”

“Pull his legs wide,” Tattoo instructed bluntly. Cain felt the mattress dip between his legs as the alpha took to his knees. Cain clenched his muscles and his eyes. His fists balled. He pulled as hard as he could, but he couldn’t close his thighs.

And then his eyes shot open at the pain. With no warning, Tattoo breached him, forcing his way in through clenched muscles as through warm butter. Cain screamed and writhed.

“Take it, bitch! Shut up! We could’ve done this the easy way, but no! You had to be a fucking brat!” Tattoo pulled out and then thrust back brutally. “You like my blood? Yeah? Well, that’s what you wanted, that’s all you get. I’m a nice guy…” He fucked hard as he mocked Cain. “I usually offer my bitches a good, sticky dollop of spit. But you? All you get is whatever drips off my nose. You happy?”

Cain grimaced in pain, trying hard to stifle the tears in his eyes. He burst into motion, hoping in vain to struggle free, but the alpha gang doubled-down, laughing at him. 

“Fucking take it, you stupid bitch!”

Someone shoved a dick in his mouth, forcing him to drop his jaw by shoving his own lips between his teeth and wedging fingers in. It hurt. Cain gagged, but there was no escaping the intrusion. An alpha fucked his mouth hard enough to force tears down his cheeks, and that was when it happened.

Without any conscious decisions, Cain’s muscles softened. The sense of panic and peril evaporated, leaving him soft, pliable. His chest heaved in effort to draw in enough air through his stinging nostrils to feed his lungs, but he felt himself separate from the anxiety of self-defense, leaving his body open to the desires of men with vicious intent and axes to grind. Men powerful enough to bring him to heel by physical prowess alone.

This was what Dean couldn’t see about him because he buried it for his own self-preservation. He needed to give in, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it until every other possible option had been exhausted and all that remained was the inevitable. It always went like this. He fought until he couldn’t any longer, and then, only when his adversaries proved their prowess, Cain’s wolf rolled. And the Submission was sweeter than wine. Cain’s defenses rolled with his metaphysical body.

He floated away on the pain. He gurgled. Spit flowed down his chin. His eyes rolled back in his head. His muscles went lax. He spread his thighs, an easy shift since all the pressure against them was bent in opposition to his closing them. He softened his mouth, pulling his lips over his teeth and creating a gentle suction that pulled a lurid moan from above him.

“Fuuuuck,” Tattoo murmured. He rolled his body down to cover Cain, fucking with a roll of his hips, laving Cain’s neck with his tongue. “That’s a good bitch. There you go. Wouldja look at that? Relax, baby. Take it. Good boy. Fuck that bitch’s throat, Jesse. Mmm.”

Tattoo tugged on his hips, lifting him up onto his wide knees, and Cain whimpered when a calloused hand circled his cock, hard and frantic. But the dominant had no intention of offering a fulfilling reach-around. He cackled, picking up the pace of his thrusts, teasing Cain’s dick.

“Lookit our bitch, boys. He likes it.” Tattoo pulled out and stumbled to his feet. He didn’t offer any direction, but there was clearly an unspoken pecking order. The enormous cock disappeared from between his lips and slammed into his ass. Cain cried out.

A fresh one pressed into his mouth up to the swollen knot. 

“Suck that dick, bitch!”

Cain went to work with a vulgar abandon. The pain morphed into flight. He flew. And he threw himself into pleasing every appendage offered to him. He sank deep into the ugly depths of depravity, sticky and sweaty and steaming, on his knees, on his belly, on his best behavior.

Time passed. They all got their fill. His ass was ruined. His body sported bruises, scrapes, smears of blood that wasn’t his, but he had a great deal to get out of his system, and he held nothing back. When he drifted off, they slapped his face to revive him, rolled him over or manhandled him to bend over the edge of the bench, and started anew.

Cain lay wasted, exhausted on the mattress, when Jelly finally got a turn. Most of the alphas sprawled about, spent and dozy. A few enjoyed easing Jelly into his new role as top, offering ridiculous advice, catcalling as he awkwardly approached the Submissive. They held Cain’s legs high. He lay lax on his back, eyeing the youth, drifting in and out of consciousness. Jelly jerked himself, biting his lip. His nickname explained itself as he struggled to maintain an erection.

“Get on top of the bitch,” someone advised helpfully. “Get his scent in your nose. Come on, kid, if you can’t get it up for a ripe pussy like this, you really need to see a doctor.”

“Would you shut up?” Jelly shot. “Gimme a sec!”

“C’mere, alpha,” Cain whispered. “Lemme take care of you.” He gestured, and the alpha fell to his knees at Cain’s shoulder. Cain held his eyes as he sucked the kid’s cock into his mouth. His jaw was exhausted. He really didn’t have much left, but the boy was beautiful, a stereotypical twink Bottom.

Cain used his tongue along the underside, and in no time, the boy hardened. Cain held his eyes. He relinquished his cock and rolled up onto trembling knees. He eased the boy down to lay flat on his back with his cock spearing the air. Without breaking eye contact, Cain asked, “May I, Sir?”

“Oh, Jesus,” the boy muttered, frozen.

The room chuckled in amusement, more of the weary alphas turning their attention to the mattress.

Cain threw a leg over and straddled, facing him. He braced the boy’s cock and sank slowly onto it, lubricated with sticky jizz that dribbled down his inner thighs.

Cain’s cock bounced with his effort, unfulfilled. He braced himself on his arms over the kid’s torso and rode him with all the energy he had left. He watched the young alpha’s face, anticipating his needs and wants and offering his service, such as he had faculties left at all. The kid was no Dom, but he was alpha, if young and untested, and Cain’s nerves pinged at the opportunity to please him, to set him soaring. Their eyes connected as Cain rocked above him. Silver hair swayed. Sweat dripped across his ribs. 

Cain was in control of every move, but his mind focused so intently on his alpha’s pleasure that he felt bodiless. He sat back, pressing his ass into the kid’s groin, sitting tall and grinding down with his eyes locked on the deep brown of the stunned alpha below him. Cain pressed until the alpha’s knot slipped inside softened walls. The kid’s eyes flew wide. His hands clutched Cain’s waist. He pressed his groin up into Cain’s ass.

He whined.

“Do it,” Cain begged. “Knot me. Do it!” He ended on a shrill pleading wail.

Cain dragged home at about two in the morning, aching and bruised, stinking to high heaven. He’d waved off the offer of a shower, needing his own space more than he needed to sluice off the stench of sex. He dutifully texted Pidge after he closed the kitchen door behind himself. 

Pidge. Tattoo. Whatever. Nice guy. It took an hour or so after the scene to come back to himself. Pidge held him shamelessly the whole time. His trembling eased slowly, buried in crisp white linens and soft, clean pillows. Pidge – his real name was Steve, but he never allowed anyone here to call him that – fed him and rubbed a cool lotion into his bruised skin.

Pidge’s nose had stopped bleeding.

They spoke softly, dreamily, easy. Cain apologized for the broken nose, not something Pidge could hide in his regular daily life, but the man laughed it off. His eyes were already blacking underneath.

“You warned me, man,” he admitted self-effacingly. “Won’t be my last trip to medical station. Look, we know what we’re getting into here. This isn’t the garden club, and none of us want it to be. What you did for little Jelly. That was good. He’s going to ride the waves for a week.” He laughed.

“Is that kid a Sub?” Cain asked. “I don’t really go for Subs.”

“Uh, you might wanna reconsider that,” Pidge chuckled. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“So, he is a Sub.”

“He’s a Neutral,” Pidge told him. “And he was playing a part. We don’t really work that way. It’s not a ladder climb. The bitch spot is yours as long as you want. He’s not a Sub, Cain, but he is a Bottom, so if you’re cool with it, we might team you two up next time, set you back to back maybe. Make you defend him. Take you both down together. It’s up to you though. If you want to solo as our bitch, no one’s going to complain.”

“Ah,” Cain wrapped an arm beneath his head and thought.

“So, do you?” Pidge posed.

“Want the bitch spot?” Cain clarified.

“You’re good at it.”

“Thirteen alphas in the roster, and I’m your only Sub? You’re kidding.”

Pidge laughed. “We have other Subs, man. Don’t flatter yourself. This club is two hundred strong. We’re pretty balanced. We keep four scene spaces outfitted in this one building, keep ‘em set for standard scenes. We have the prison cell, a school room, a doctor’s office, and an army barracks. The usual tropes. But we’ve also got two blank spaces. We can build whatever we want, so if you have any ideas, shoot them to me, and we’ll put them to a vote with the guys.”

Cain thought it through. His body ached, but he felt soft and alive.

“Is there anything else I need to know?” he asked.

“We’re not uptight, man,” Pidge replied with a touch of irony that evoked the role he’d just played. He lifted the blanket and eased out of the bed. “Our only stipulation is that our members’ privacy is supreme. You don’t give any details, not even to your Alpha. If he insists, you refer him to me. You got that? Quickest way to get your ass kicked out of the club without a refund is to divulge our business.”

Cain smiled. “First rule of Fight Club…”

“It’s no joke, Darius Cain!” Pidge rounded on him, and Cain felt his body flinch a conditioned surrender. “We know who you are. We know who your Alpha is. We don’t have a punishment matrix here. You don’t get to pay for mistakes with a paddle or a strap. Fuck this up and you’re out on your ass. No second chances! You forfeit your dues.”

“Yessir.” It slipped out of Cain’s mouth without his permission. He’d thought his alpha had taken back over and left his wolf where he usually stashed it, but evidently not. Pidge had his number and his dick on a leash.

Pidge smirked, reading his mind. “You good?”

“I’m fine,” Cain argued, irritated at himself.

“Go home, Submissive. Text me when you get there. Best not test me on this.” And there went Cain’s hope that Pidge hadn’t noticed the Claim-bond they now shared. 

So Cain’s first text as the door latched behind him was to his new Dom. He huffed at his own easy capitulation. Easy? Okay, not easy. But complete. He was Pidge’s now. He didn’t question it. He slipped into the parlor, his thumbs in motion on a second text to Castiel, but the man rose from his favorite armchair when Cain walked in.

“How was it?” Cas asked.

“Intense,” Cain admitted with a grimace. “But successful.”

Cas examined his face and ran a thumb over his bruised throat. He zeroed in on a smear of blood beneath Cain’s left ear. Cas touched it, but Cain pulled his head away with a frown.

“It isn’t your blood,” Cas observed. “Are you injured at all?”

“Just bruises and aches,” Cain told him. “A couple of surface scratches.”

“This weekend is big for her, Darius. We can’t afford time for you to recover. I need you sharp.”

“I’m fine, sir. She’s my priority. I need a few hours of sleep, and then I’m on. I know what this weekend means. I won’t let you down.”

“Get cleaned up and go to bed then,” the Alpha instructed. “Give Michael the receipt for your club dues. He’ll reimburse you. Expenses involving Tertiary balancing sessions are covered by the Pack. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, sir. If I may, have we considered installing an elevator?”

“If you can’t make it up one flight of stairs, you’re not fit to protect my mate,” Cas informed him, following as Cain limped into the foyer.

Cain grumbled but didn’t offer any substantive complaints. Cas grinned as he escorted his weary alpha up the sweeping staircase. “You smell terrible,” he observed. “But far more balanced. I take it Pidge’s tutelage suits you?”

“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Cain huffed, making slow progress toward his room.

Cas burst out laughing. “He’s perfect for you, Darius,” he said after achieving the top landing. “Those boys go hard. Next time, please don’t play this close to a journey. I’ve stitched members of that club up in the middle of the night more times than I can recall. And since you're wearing someone else’s blood home, I expect our clinic night staff is busy patching up whoever you clocked.”

“I did our Pack proud, Sir,” Cain boasted humbly. “It took thirteen of them to pin me.”

“It did, did it?” Cas teased. “Thirteen?”

Cain blushed with a subtle smirk. “Something like that. At least two broken noses and a leg that may or may not be fractured. I’d lay bets on more than two jammed or broken fingers. I didn’t roll easily.”

“Worth it?” Castiel asked seriously as Cain paused outside his own bedroom.

Cain dropped the flirtatious tone. “Worth it,” he agreed. “If you don’t mind, sir. I’d rather Dean not know the details. I’m not planning to engage in play this intense very often. A little goes a long way with my wolf, so it’s not something I need to make the Pack deal with. I can be in and out without raising a fuss, if you understand my meaning.”

“Dean is your superior, Darius,” Cas replied without quarter. “And an alpha in this Pack. You don’t owe him any details further than you owe me, but you won’t keep secrets from him that pertain to your health and balance. This pissing match between the two of you is beginning to annoy me. Keep it up, and I’ll make you report to him about the wellbeing of your wolf instead of me to drive the point home. He outranks you. Am I clear?”

“Yessir,” Cain replied, chastened.

“Good. I will hold you to that. As will Dean. Provoke him much further, and he’ll take you down again. If that happens, Cain, I’m putting _you_ on suspended leave as April’s guardian. Dean has no interest in hierarchical displays, so if he’s forced to Claim you twice, it will be because you goaded him into it. I have no patience with pointless posturing for rank. You can’t beat him. Spare us all the trauma of a confrontation.”

“Sir.” Cain bowed formally, if stiffly. “May I retire?”

Cas softened and placed a palm against his cheek. “Get some sleep. I’m proud of you, Submissive. You did well.”

“Goodnight, Sir.”

Cas watched him disappear behind the door. Closing his eyes and stretching out with his bonds, Cas surveyed his Pack. The house felt stable. All was quiet. Within Cain’s room, the shower started up.

Castiel’s link to his brother warbled shakily. Gabriel was weeping again. Cas cast back to the sense of dread that had overcome him at the start of the Septennial. He’d known then something was off with Gabe, but he hadn’t been able to put his thumb on what it was. It had made him jumpy and irrational. It had thrown him off his game in several directions, casting ripples outward that unnerved Dean, April, Cain, and Michael. Cas rubbed the bridge of his nose and then turned back to his own room. They were Pack-piled again tonight.

They seemed always to migrate closer together whenever separations were imminent.

Everything about that felt right to Cas. He needed his Pack in his bed, the whole foursome. Luckily, they all shared that sentiment. Likely, if he forbade co-sleeping, they would defy him anyway.

Creeping into the master, he doffed his robe and tossed it over the corner chair. His eyes adjusted rapidly to the darkness, revealing that they’d left him the center. He huffed. He would either have to crawl up from the foot of the bed or stumble across Dean’s body to get to the open spot.

He weighed his options with a flat expression that was wasted on the darkness when Dean saved him the need.

“Here, Alpha. I gotcha. Waited for you,” Dean mumbled, rolling to his feet and holding the covers back for Cas to slip in, both of them nude in the darkness.

Cas graced him with a warm kiss as he scrambled in before rolling over to hold April, welcoming the sleep-warm body of his husband against his back.

“Night, Alpha.”

“Goodnight, Dean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Warning for discussions and repercussions of infertility***
> 
> ***Warning for graphic violent rapey sex. Everything's consensual, but it goes way into the violent side.***
> 
> The plan from here is one more chapter at this stage of their lives before vaulting ahead a ways. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who reads, who comments, who's hanging with this pack. I love all of you.
> 
> Apologies for the continued torture of Gabriel. I can't help myself. Not sorry at all for torturing Cain. And for those of you who were looking forward to seeing where Michael's headspace wanders off to after his epic conflagration, here it is. It's like he feels seen now, so he can settle back on his heels and get on with chilling and just being Michael. Did any of us see that coming? I didn't. 
> 
> Love to the pack.


	16. Friday, February 8, 2019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate's putting in the work, but it's harder than she expected. April and Cain are feeling each other out with absolutely no help from Nicholas. And Dean and Cas are adorable supportive husbands. What can I say?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I posted. RL is getting hairy. All kinds of things are changing. I'm taking the plunge on a Master's program that quite frankly scares the shit outta me. But staying my usual course is no longer feasible. So...
> 
> Wish me luck.

NOW:

“It hurts, damnit!” Kate complained. “I need a break.”

“Omega, there is no way to weaken the pull of the bond without stretching it. I need you to give me another five minutes.” Kate’s therapist stood behind her armchair with a firm hand on the back of her sweaty neck, rhythmically squeezing her grip. “Pull, Kate. Pull on it as hard as you can. Breathe.”

“I’m breathing! God!”

“Snapping at me isn’t going to help you. Try to funnel your frustration into your efforts where it will do you some good.”

The bitch’s patience was getting on Kate’s last nerve. A drop of sweat plinked from the tip of her nose. Her fingers clutched the armrests like vices. The awful pull of a mate-rejection knotted her gut into a lump of agony. “I don’t see why I have to be the one going through the hard work,” Kate grumbled. “She’s the one who knotted and Mated me. Make her do the therapy.”

“There is nothing fair about what’s happened to you…” Mildred murmured.

“What she _did_ to me, you mean,” Kate shot back through clenched teeth.

“…but the only path to a freedom of any sort now lies down a path of hard effort and sweat. It’s going to be worth it in the long run. This is the hardest part right now, my dear. It will get easier. I promise.”

“Sure would go a lot faster if someone had a hand on the back of _her_ neck too is all I’m saying. This _hurts_.”

Mildred nodded sympathetically. “Yes, it’s been likened to a reverse childbirth sensation. Instead of pushing something out of you, you’re pulling your bond-link back in. It hurts in much the same way, although the pain you’re feeling can’t be alleviated by medication. It’s psychic pain, not physical.”

“The fuck, you say!” Kate protested. “My gut is on fire here!”

“Calm yourself, Omega. You need that energy focused, not shooting out into the room to dissipate where it can’t do you any good. If it makes you feel any better, everything you feel, she feels too. At least you get to choose the time and place. She’s at your mercy right now, sweetie.”

“It’s been five minutes,” Kate wheedled.

“It’s been three.”

“Aaaaarrgh! Life, and alphas, and Mating-bonds, and everything to do with this _SUCKS!”_

Mildred smiled placidly. “Pull, Kate. Like I showed you. Pull through your bellybutton. Breathe it out. It’s tight now, but it _will_ loosen over time.”

“I don’t wanna do this,” Kate wailed even as she put her back into it. She suffered a moment of weakness and caved to the compulsion anchored in her belly. “I want to go home. I need my mate!”

Mildred didn’t ruffle at her despair. “That’s the bond talking, Kate, the one you’re trying with all your might to sever. It isn’t what you want. Remember, we talked about this. We anticipated that it would get hard, that the bond would fight back, would try to undercut your determination to be free. Remember, Kate. You told me what you want is freedom. Don’t give in. You can’t go back there. It isn’t your home anymore. Your pack membership is being dissolved.”

“She would take me back if I begged,” Kate whimpered with tears streaming down her face and her entire being engaged in pulling against the bond as hard as she could.

“No, Omega, that choice has been made. There’s no going back. _Focus!_”

Mildred pulled three more rounds from the imbittered Omega and then curled up with her on the couch. Mildred steadied the hot mug of tea as Kate brought it to her lips.

“There, now. That was superb work. You’ve made real progress today. I promise it will start getting easier soon. I want you using your heating pad on your belly at least four times a day, twenty minutes at a time. You can have Tylenol if it aches enough to be troubling.”

“I thought you said it was only psychic pain and drugs weren’t going to help,” Kate grunted into her tea.

Mildred helped her set the mug down and then pulled the weary Omega into her embrace. She sighed. “Your mind does the work, but your body feels the aftershocks. You’ll be sore for a while. No damage done though.”

Kate stared straight ahead, out across the living room, out through the tall windows to the swimming pool which was covered with a taut tarp for winter.

“I want this to be over,” she pleaded.

Mildred nodded into her hair, following her gaze. “You’re going to have to define for yourself what that means, Kate. We cannot free you from your mate entirely. She will always be a presence in your life, a shadow figure just out of sight. You can minimize her presence through regular therapy, but you’ll never eliminate it entirely.”

“Why can’t I just close the bond and keep it closed?” Kate’s voice eked small and uncertain.

“A bond’s natural state is wide open on both ends. Closing it takes mental and emotional energy that will drain you over time. By all means, close it for periods when you’ve got the emotional wherewithal to do that. But keeping it that way all the time will exhaust you. It’s not healthy or sustainable. Our goal here is to allow you a shot at an unfettered life without the drag of an unwelcome bond weighing you down. Taking the easy way out will hurt you in the long run. You understand?”

Mildred’s grandmotherly presence soothed Kate more than she wanted to admit, considering the Omega was determined to hold a grudge against the torture the old woman exacted. She couldn’t stay mad though. Mildred had never lied to her. She didn’t sugarcoat anything. She didn’t allow Kate to wallow in self-pity when there were far more productive uses for Kate’s outrage.

Sadly, Kate confessed, “I always feel the impulse to go back home…just to make it stop hurting. I need my alpha.”

Mildred kissed her temple and hugged her tighter. “You’re warring against millions of years of evolved instincts, Kate. Everything you’re feeling is exactly what you should be feeling. Keep in mind though, you are not your emotions. You are not your thoughts. You are your choices and your actions and the quiet observer inside your head who _decides._ When you feel those impulses, love, shine light on them. Examine them. Ask them if they are true. Ask them if they are your true path. And if they aren’t, embrace them for what they are and let them go. You’re going to be okay, Kate.”

“Dean’s leaving for a couple of days,” Kate observed.

“Are you worried about that?” Mildred asked.

“I’m…What if I freak out in the middle of the night and run home. I don’t trust myself.”

Mildred chuckled. “Oh, Kate. I’ve worked with a lot of unwanted Mating-bond holders in my life. Very few have been as determined as you. Besides, Dean isn’t leaving you all by yourself in this big house. Would it make you feel better to have an alpha stay with you? We can arrange that.”

“I don’t know. I think I’m afraid being alone. He’s kind of been my safety net these last weeks, even if I don’t always need him right at my elbow. Just having him close helps. I’ve needed him in the middle of night a few times.”

Mildred sat upright, letting the young woman go and handing Kate’s tea back to her to finish. “Dean said Kali has asked to fill in for him while he’s gone. Perhaps you could spend the next couple of days getting to know her better. I see that beta as a supremely solid presence in this house. In your alpha’s absence, I believe she’ll take good care of you.”

Kate took a deep breath, bracing herself. “She’s a Dominant,” she told Mildred as if that would explain her discomfort. Seeing that it didn’t, Kate shrugged. “Maybe it’s nothing. But I can’t bring myself to trust a Dominant. Not yet.”

“But alphas are trustworthy?” Mildred challenged.

“Instinct battling with experience, maybe,” Kate decided. “I’m wired to trust alphas in spite of everything, especially one like Dean. He’s solid without being commanding. Know what I mean? But Doms have no presentation other than commanding. It’s their whole persona. The last thing I need is someone ordering me around right now.”

Mildred chuckled again and heaved herself to standing. “It’ll surprise you to know that I’m a Dominant, Kate. Or, at least, I used to be some years ago.”

“Figures,” Kate muttered, shaking her head.

“My wolf has passed on now. That part of my life is in the past. I miss it sometimes. But the point is, Dominants have a way of offering support in a way that alphas sometimes lack.”

Kate rolled her eyes and chanted, “All right. Fine. I will give Kali a chance. It’s only for two days anyway. I’ll have my hands full of pups who think I’m hiding their mothers and who want to nurse at bedtime. I should be able to distract myself well enough.”

Mildred considered her client, cocking her head slightly to the side. “You enjoy caring for the Winchesters’ pups. You like it here in this post.”

Kate ducked her head as a soft smile gave her away.

Mildred touched her shoulder and then lifted her chin with a gentle hand. “That will do you more good than any amount of therapy, Kate. You’re doing sacred work, and your soul feels it. The Universe smiles through your eyes already, dear one. Give it time. I am so blessed to know you.”

Kate held her eyes before nodding silently.

“All right, then,” Mildred said with a backward step. “That’s enough for today. Let me know when there’s an update from your attorney, would you please? Finalizing your Pack dissolution will help, and we’ll want to springboard off the emotional kickback from that. Call me any time you need to, Kate – any time, night or day, even if Dean is right down the hall.”

“I will, beta. Thank you. I’m sorry I’m such a pain to work with.” Kate helped her gather her bags and walked her to the front door.

Mildred dropped a kiss on her cheek, squeezed her forearm, and scuttled down the front steps like a woman half her age, off to her next appointment.

Kate stood in the open doorway, watching the little blue compact round the drive and pull away around the curve and out of sight. She knuckled into the softness of her belly with a pained face.

“May I escort you back inside, Omega?” Fred offered. “It is rather too cold to linger in doorways this morning.” Kate let him ease the door closed. And she didn’t mean to, she really didn’t, but she found herself sobbing into Fred’s chest.

“There, there, little Omega. Everything will improve in time.”

“I got her, Fred. Thanks, man.” Dean took Kate by her shuddering shoulders and directed her to the kitchen. “First, let’s get you a pain killer. I know you’re aching right now. Second, hydrate and protein-…ate. Then, a nap with a heating pad. Let me take care of you, kiddo. I know that was a rough one. I could feel it.”

“It’s all so fucked up, Dean,” she told him. “Everyone keeps telling me it will get better, but I can’t see how.”

“I know,” he assured her, taking her into his arms and waving Michael to fetch the heating pad. “Gotta trust the process and keep on keeping on. Okay? Trust me. I put my ass right in the fire to bring you here. Still don’t have full feeling down my left butt cheek. You hear me? I’m not giving up on you, and I’m not letting you give up on you. Besides, you’re the only person at this point that Kat actually likes.” Dean accepted the heating pad from his mate and acknowledged Michael with a bond caress. “I gotta protect my investment. We’ll get through this. Together.”

***************

“Are you about ready to go…? April, why aren’t you dressed yet?” Cain stopped short in the doorway of her suite bedroom and checked his watch. “We need to get going. What on earth are you doing?”

April stood in the middle the lavish hotel room stark naked and staring out the window, eyes vacant.

“Sir?” she asked vaguely.

Cain huffed a heavy sigh and shook his head. “Omega, look at me.” He snapped his fingers to draw her eyes. “We need to leave in the next ten minutes or we’re not going to make it. Kimmel is on a schedule, and he’s not going to wait for an unknown who is damn lucky to get the guest chair on the last taping day before the Grammys. They’re doing us a favor, April, not the other way round. So, put that dress on, and let’s go.”

“Alpha, I…” She blinked vacantly.

“No,” he interrupted, assuming a stern tone. “No. We’re not doing this. Not right now. Stop thinking. Stop worrying about things that are not your job. Right now, all you have to do is get dressed. That’s it. That’s all. Can you do that, or do you need me to do it for you?”

She frowned and cast a puzzled glance to the dress, laid neatly out on her made bed. “For me?”

Cain licked his lips and cracked his neck. “All right. Look. I’m not fooled. And I’m not letting you sabotage anything. I know what this is, and I’m not falling for it. But I’ll go over it for you again, so we can understand each other. I can feel your jitters, April. I know your mind is moving ninety-to-nothing right now about the big crowds and the scary projects and what everyone is going to think about you. Stop. All right? Stop. None of that is your job.”

Cain guided her to the edge of the bed and sat her down. He knelt in front of her and commanded her eyes with his own.

“Your job… You listening? You have three jobs. That’s it. Just three. Number one…” Cain held a finger up. “You pick the career direction. Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there. All you do is point. Wherever you want to go, you just point. If you say you’re homebound for the next ten years to raise a tribe of rug rats and write showtunes and you don’t want to leave your property, that’s what I’ll make happen. If you want a world tour and filled stadiums every night, I can give you that too. The how isn’t your job. Just the what. You with me?”

She nodded.

He cleared his throat and lifted a second finger. “Number two. You put in the sweat and the hours. You do the music, April. You invest the hard work to make a sellable product. You write and collaborate and perform. Anything you want. I don’t care what it is. No one can do that but you. That’s yours.”

“Yessir.” Her voice seemed a trifle less distant.

“And number three? When I tell you it’s time to turn on the sparkle, you sparkle. Don’t claim you don’t know what that means. I know all about the little stage persona up there in your head. You set your mind to being charming and electric when you’re on a stage, any stage, and you and I will get along fine. This business is not kind to shy, delicate homebodies. And it doesn’t wait for Omegas to work their way through fits of self-sabotage. So, until you can wrench this part of your life away from your Omega and give it to your front-brain, I’m taking everything but those three things out of your hands. Everything else is my job. Not yours. Stand up for me.”

“Alpha?”

“No questions. On your feet.”

She stood, confused, discombobulated.

“Arms up.” Cain collected her dress and slipped it over her head, tugging it into place.

“No underwear?” she asked.

Cain laughed. “Our little secret. No one will know. You and Jimmy aren’t going to be doing cartwheels.”

A bubble of laughter escaped April’s lips, and she bit down on the lower one, oddly ashamed of having laughed. Cain zipped her up. She looked up at him as he circled back to her front, looking her over, nodding. Her eyes seemed locked in a wide, terrified stare. He took her hands in his and rubbed circles on the backs with his thumbs.

“April, I’m not ever going to put you into a situation you can’t handle. Don’t get flustered. Three jobs. Okay? Everything else is mine to worry about. This weekend is all gravy for you. You’re not going to win on Sunday. These things are far less unpredictable than they seem. _Evan Hanson_ has it tied up with a bow. That takes the pressure off you entirely. It’s a hundred percent positive publicity and sparkle. You and Michael get to attend one of Hollywood’s most exclusive shindigs, and they are going to love you, sweetheart. In between now and then, you need to work. Right now, it’s Jimmy Kimmel. Tonight, it’s studio with Nick. You can do this. You can do everything I’m going to ask you to do. And if you get flustered, I will rescue you. Even that isn’t your job. I’ve got a bond with you, so we don’t need a rescue word or a secret signal. I’ll have both eyes on you every second. The moment you start to waver, I’ll sweep in like a knight and whisk you away on my horse.”

April released a long exhale and then nodded.

“Right,” Cain said with a clap of his hands and a glance around at the floor. “Shoes.”

“Closet,” she told him.

Ninety seconds later, he hustled her into the elevator with her earrings in a bag dangling from his wrist and his phone in his hand to summon her stylist to meet them at the car. He licked his lips again, suppressing an urge to fidget in his impatience. This had to be the slowest elevator on the planet.

“We’re not going to win?” April questioned as the door finally opened. “You’re sure?” Cain shook his head. He gestured her out of the elevator with his eyes scanning the lobby for danger while simultaneously checking his phone.

“No, you won’t. Not this one. But the Tonys now… Just you wait. April, you won’t just be nominated for a Tony, you’re going to win the big one. And I mean you, not you and Nick as a team. You, all by yourself for that anthem. You’re going to win. So, relax this weekend and enjoy yourself. Get familiar with the process. Learn the steps.” Cain flagged April’s harried stylist down and ushered both women through to the street and straight into the waiting car. The hotel doorman closed them in with a wave to their driver, and Cain slumped back into soft leather seats. “Your premiere professional release, April Renée, and you’re going to walk home with a Tony.” Cain stated the last sentence to himself, lost in his own musings.

April smirked across the seat at him as a woman she didn’t know ran skilled hands through her hair. Cain held a hand out to his charge, and she grinned and grabbed it, squeezing in excitement.

Standing in the wing with a sophisticated young man in a headset, April felt a bead of sweat steal between her shoulder blades. She wished at that moment that she hadn’t rejected underpants. At this rate, her dress would cling to her whole backside by the time she stood up again after her interview. She didn’t hear her own introduction, startling when her handsome escort chivvied her through to the stage. She glanced briefly at Cain, off the side where he could watch from offstage. He winked and pressed a knuckle into his dimpled cheek as a reminder to turn her sparkle on, and she grinned back, pulling her ringmaster in front and stepping out with a bounce to her stride that set her skirt in motion.

The applause from in studio was polite. It took goading by the production staff to get more volume from them. These people didn’t know her. They clearly felt themselves unlucky to have scored tickets on a day when a complete no-name was headlining. From inside her calculating headspace, April assessed. They didn’t know her well yet, perhaps, but they knew who she was. She could build on that.

Whatever had set her to sweating backstage in the frigid theater vanished instantly as she stepped out, replaced by a mind moving so fast it sent sparks from her eyes and fingertips.

She smiled and waved, reaching the host’s platform quickly and shaking his hand with a solid grip and accepting a kiss to her cheek before taking her seat.

“Welcome, April Winchester,” Jimmy introduced, taking his seat and turning to her. “It’s so nice to meet you. We’ve heard a lot about you, young lady.” He was teasing warmly, and she smiled back, working the charm and the camera angles as Cain had taught her.

“Mostly naughty things, I’m sure,” she laughed. “Something about Omegas always seems to precede our arrival, I’ve found. Not always the nicest things.”

“No, no, I promise. Nothing bad. All good things. You’re in town for the Grammys, is that right?”

“Yes, I am,” she agreed and smiled when the audience responded. “As well as a few projects I’m working on. I have some collaborations up my sleeve while I’m here in your lovely city.”

“Is that so?” Jimmy asked. “Can you share with us what you’re working on?”

“Not yet,” she teased. “But they are going to be very exciting. Keep an ear out for several announcements. Big plans, Jimmy. Big plans.”

“Well, then let’s talk about something you’re free to discuss. Have you ever been to the Grammys before?”

“No, never. Nothing like this before. It’s all quite overwhelming.” She laughed in her enthusiasm, and she captivated with the force of her charisma.

“You’ve really taken Broadway by storm, is how I heard it,” he prompted. “Everyone is talking about you. Never published so much as a commercial jingle before in your life, and then out of nowhere you come along and write this…just…smash hit for a Nicholas Maraby musical. What on earth was that like?”

April grinned and lowered her eyes coyly. “Nick is a trip,” she admitted. “He’s a brilliant, brilliant artist, and an incredible mentor. He really took me under his wing. He’s taught me so much. I never expected to have our show – his show, really – nominated. It’s a dream come true. My head is spinning.”

Jimmy leaned closer, entranced. “You’re Mated to a very famous, powerful man, April. How does he feel about your nomination?”

She laughed merrily and tugged at her ear in a playful gesture. “He’s a bit…honestly, Castiel is a bit befuddled by the whole thing. He doesn’t know what to think. It’s not his world, you see. He understands science and medicine and social issues, politics. He doesn’t quite know what to make of us musicians. We speak a different language. He’s adorably lost.”

Jimmy encouraged her to continue with a nod of his head, so she went on. “He’s incredibly supportive though. He’s really proud of me. In fact, when the nomination came out, he gave this hair comb to me as a gift.” She indicated the jeweled comb on the side of her head which sparkled under the stage lights. “It was his mother’s. It’s a family heirloom.”

“Very pretty,” Jimmy agreed. “Although a man of his means, I mean, _used_ jewelry…? He couldn’t buy you something new?”

She laughed again, playing along easily, stifling her irritation at the entrenched misogyny. “Perhaps when I win, he’ll buy me something new.”

“So, first song you release wins a Grammy nomination…”

“To be clear,” she interrupted, setting a delicate hand on his arm. “It’s the musical as a whole that’s nominated. Most of it is Nick’s work.”

“But your songs play a key role, let’s not kid ourselves…”

She acknowledged the point gracefully.

He went on, a twinkle in his eye giving away that something was coming. “But it’s your first musical release ever, am I right?”

Her eyes shot wide as she caught on, and she pressed her lips together in mock-shock, hiding her face in her hands. “Oh! No! It’s not.” The admission came with a well-timed blush. She started to laugh again, blushing beautifully. “No, I used to have a YouTube channel. Oh my god. I can’t believe you brought that up!”

“Brought it up?” Jimmy played into her embarrassment. “We’ve got the videos. Can we show them?”

“You didn’t!”

“Of course, you weren’t a Winchester then, or a Novak. You were…” He picked up a title card and read from it. “April Anderson, also known as PookieBear-Ninety-Nine.”

“Oh my god!” April’s stage blush pivoted into near mortification. She followed his gesture to watch a video from years ago – a prepubescent Lupin girl with her blonde hair tucked behind her ears, warbling along to a synthesizer’s melody. The music wasn’t bad, but the voice missed its mark horribly, and April couldn’t stop giggling as she watched her younger self brutalize her own composition. She hadn’t watched any of those videos in ages. She had forgotten they existed, in truth, until they were dredged up from whatever chasm she’d dropped them into.

The internet is forever, after all.

He didn’t play the whole thing.

“That was…” Kimmel started.

“Just awful,” April finished for him, wiping tears of mirth out of her eyes.

“Oh, now, not that bad. Maybe not Grammy-worthy, but there’s potential there, no?”

“If you say so,” she giggled.

“You, young lady, are just delightful. We don’t have many Omegas on our show. I wonder why that is?”

“It’s a good question,” April retorted with a smirk, moderating her tone to be playful rather than confrontational – a suitable chastisement from an Ozzie. “In fact, did you know that Omegas make up less of a presence on late night talk shows than minors do?”

“Kids?” he asked, taken by surprise. “Really? Is that true? We have more child guests than Omegas?”

“It’s true,” she confirmed. “Maybe the Jimmy Kimmel Show will be the one to lead the changing face of Lupin representation. There are a lot of Omegas in show business trying to make an impact and getting precious little airtime.” It was a scathing comment, but she delivered it with such innocence and zeal, her host couldn’t help but be drawn in.

“We invite Nicholas Maraby often enough,” he defended.

“Yes, and who else?”

“Well, there’s…You.” Jimmy sought help from behind the camera but came up empty and had to admit she was right. “You know what? You’re right. Shame on us. Challenge accepted. And I promise when you come back next time, I can give you a longer list.”

“I look forward to it,” she grinned, rewarding him with a dazzling smile.

“We have to do a commercial break,” he stated. “You’re going to sing for us right after, right?”

“I would be honored,” she nodded graciously.

When they cut for the break, the set turned into a scurrying anthill of activity. April was whisked across to the grand piano, offered a bathroom break (which she declined), and a bottle of water (which she accepted). Cain appeared at her elbow with the light of victory in his eyes.

“Perfect,” he praised. “Almost done, beautiful. You good? Any qualms?”

“I’m fine, alpha,” she assured him. “This part is easy.” And she meant it. All her worries from back in the hotel room had melted away. She was in her element, begrudging nothing but the absence of her Pack. They would be watching when the show aired tonight though. She could still perform for them.

And she did.

April lit up the stage when the cameras turned onto her once more. She sang her show anthem, the one she’d written with Castiel in mind, the one Cain expected her to win a Tony for, and she held nothing back. Gone was the warbly, unpracticed voice of her eleven-year-old self. Gone was the self-doubt that held her hostage when she tried to dress herself in her hotel room. Gone was the myth that Omegas don’t belong onstage under hot lights and millions of eyes. April’s fingers flew. Her eyes flashed, glinting gold at heightened moments of the chorus. Her voice thundered with passionate outrage, driving the point – her plight as a second-class nobody – from fiction to reality, coming on the heels of her polite chastisement of an industry that considered her invisible.

And when her song ended, the audience cheered, not the reserved welcome of a disappointed theater house, but an enthusiastic, full-throttled, resounding rumble of appreciation. April glowed with excitement, thrilled to her bones.

Once the cameras cut feed, Cain caught her up and spun her right there by the piano. “You were magnificent!”

“Did you see me? Cain, can you believe I just did that?” April bubbled over with excitement.

“This calls for a celebration,” the alpha announced, setting her on her feet and allowing the sound tech to rescue his mic, untangling the cord before it tripped anyone and sparked a lawsuit. “We’re meeting Nick for an early supper, and you can have whatever the hell you want.”

She laughed, full-bellied and happy. “You always let me have whatever I want.”

“Keep showing up like you just did, and I always will.”

She smacked him on the shoulder.

“Come on. Let’s go meet Nick and tell him the good news,” Cain encouraged, nudging her along.

***************

Cas had opened his mouth to call out across the garage to his husband as he approached Dean’s Impala, but instead, he ducked a hurtling hammer that barely missed his head and clattered noisily against the concrete floor.

“Cease fire!” he called with his hand up in surrender.

Dean’s head popped up from behind the open trunk of his beleaguered car, a look of supreme dissatisfaction on his sweat-coated face. “It’s no good,” Dean stated. He wiped grimy hands on a shop towel and then slung it to the ground behind him and stared at the underside of his trunk. The gash splitting the trunk showed signs of intense manhandling, but it was barely narrower than it had been on its sad way home late on Christmas night. The hammer proved as useless as every other tool Dean tried.

The trunk was ruined.

Cas handed him half a beer.

They stood together, facing the mangled sheet metal, studying it collectively and thinking. Cas had suggestions on his tongue, but he knew better than to voice them.

Dean turned his head and his focus, studying his husband just as intently. “Go on and say it,” he prompted.

Cas shook his head, still staring straight ahead. “Nope. Not mine to solve.”

Dean huffed in frustration. He stepped forward again, touching the jagged tear carefully, feeling for any evidence he was making progress. “I should leave her like this,” he reflected. “A monument to being an asshole with no self-control.”

“You could do that,” Cas agreed stoically. “We have garage space. We could build a museum-style barricade around her and set a plaque in the concrete with the date and location of her demise.”

“You’re such a jerk,” Dean muttered. He drained the beer and tossed the bottle back to Cas.

Cas startled, but caught it. “There are no _’shoulds’_ here, Dean. You do what you want to do. Whatever that is will be acceptable. I don’t like that you’re in pain, but this isn’t mine to fix.”

“Would you fix it if it were?” Dean asked, crossing back to where Cas waited for him, facing his husband instead of his car.

Cas kissed him.

“You’re changing the subject,” Dean accused, breaking free. A hand slid down over Dean’s backside.

“No, I’m continuing the conversation through another medium,” Cas countered. “Keep up, Winchester. It’s a multimedia world.”

Dean leaned in and kissed back. He wrapped his fingers around Cas’ on the beer bottle and used the tangling of fingers as a lead-in to sway into a slow dance, circling slowly, nothing graceful about it other than that there was no audience to judge. Cas slipped his free hand into Dean’s back pocket.

Somehow, they found themselves staring intently into one another’s eyes. No matter how many hours he’d studied Castiel’s cobalt gaze, Dean never felt like he’d seen everything. Today, they glowed with a gentle light of affectionate amusement and wonder. Dean led the dance, rotating in place to a slow pulse in his head. His fingers smudged Cas’ perfect manicure.

“I’ll call Frank tonight and tell him I need a replacement for the trunk bonnet,” Dean murmured, careful not to break the spell.

Cas smiled with his eyes. “I miss your car far more than I expected to,” he admitted to Dean with a chagrined expression.

“Is that so?” Dean asked. “All that shit you give me over being obsessed with a damn car?”

“It’s true. I concede the point, Winchester. She’s much more than a car. She’s family. And it hurts to see her infirm.”

A shadow passed across Dean’s eyes, but Cas kissed it clear. They’d already talked the subject to death. Dean didn’t need another reassurance so much as he needed a reminder. Cas’ lips could remind him as many times as it took. There was no shame, no lingering blame or judgment. What happened, happened. It was over now, and neither man felt compelled to talk about it.

Instead, they slow-danced.

No words required.

And then they fell still.

Dean set his head against Castiel’s cheek. “That trunk is me, Cas. I’m not ever going to be better than this.”

Cas tilted his face to kiss Dean’s temple. “One: you have no way of knowing that. Two: I love you as you are, as you were, and as you might ever be. Three: How you are is all I ever wanted.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Dean retorted. “How are you even real?”

“Good things do happen, Dean.”

“Huh, not in my experience.”

“I’ll try not to take that personally,” Cas replied sourly, pulling away and taking the beer bottle with him.

But Dean wasn’t listening to Cas anyway. He had already turned back to face the disgrace he’d made of his car.

“I can’t fix it, man. I broke it so bad, I can’t fix it.”

“That’s not true,” Cas told him.

“It’s always been you who fixes the shit I break. I can’t wrap my head around this.” Dean scrubbed both hands through his hair, leaving a black grease-streak along his forehead.

Cas lowered his chin and looked piercingly into his eyes. “YOU built us a new table. YOU took your midterms with a hangover for the ages and a puke bucket at your feet. YOU faced Judge Sterns and took accountability for breaking that man’s arm. YOU repaired my car after you wrecked it. YOU have been _’fixing things’_ your entire life. Get on the goddamn phone to Frank Devereaux and find Baby a new trunk bonnet. And stop feeling sorry for yourself before I have to wail it out of you.”

“Aight, jeez!”

“Do it today. Who knows how long it’s going to take him to find such a relic? I miss my ride.”

“Bossy fucker,” Dean grumbled, closing the trunk carefully.

“You’re damned right,” Cas agreed. “Nothing else gets through that thick Winchester skull.”

***************

As their private car pulled up to the curb, Cain put a hand under April’s elbow and stalled her, leaning in to whisper. “I don’t trust Nick, Omega. This close to a big award ceremony, he’ll be looking for a way to turn up the juice. Don’t believe a word he says, and don’t take any advice from him. Not right now.”

April rolled her eyes. “I know, Cain. I’m not stupid.”

“Consider yourself warned,” he added. “If he tries to pull you into some crazy plan, it’s _your_ bare bottom on the line.”

She lifted a hand in acknowledgment as she let the driver help her onto the sidewalk.

“April, I mean it. It’s on your… Damnit.” Cain petered off to mumbling to himself as he followed. He had a bad feeling, but what could he do? Neither Omega had broken any rules yet.

Nick and Jenn were already seated at a long table sprinkled with people Cain knew. April squealed when she spotted them, ignoring the pop of flashbulbs from both sides. Cain followed at a slower pace, intent on drawing no eyes to his presence. The paparazzi didn’t know Cain from a random sidewalk junkie, and he wanted to keep it that way. Nick, on the other hand, glowed under the attention. He swept April into his orbit as naturally as sunlight feeds spring leaves, and she fit right into his space. He had a table full of guests with him, and he set to making introductions immediately.

Cain sauntered up to the far side and set a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. She was a sight for sore eyes. He’d missed her.

“Jenn.”

She looked him over without hiding her amusement. “You are a brave man, Darius Cain.”

“The more common accusation is ‘stupid’,” he quipped. He took the seat next to Nick’s alpha, glancing down the long table. Rowena was here. Interesting. That didn’t bode well. Rowena’s presence meant there were plans afoot that he didn’t yet know about.

“How does it compare to the old days?” Jenn asked him with a hefty nudge to his shoulder that sent him flailing momentarily for balance. He grimaced at her. Had he said he missed her? He meant she was a royal pain in his ass. She mimed lining up a sniper’s shot. “You, the girl, the Alpha? How does it compare to your days looking through a gun-sight?”

“It’s very much the same,” he commented. “It’s all about precise calculations, impossible predictions, and making no mistakes.”

“You wanna see about getting our own table?” she asked hopefully. “It’s a bit crowded here. Nick doesn’t need me for this.”

“Mm,” Cain glanced around, but there were no empties nearby. “Tempting, but I’m on the clock. It looks like Nick’s making plans, and I need to know what goes down.”

“Jesus, Darius, Nick’s always making plans. Let the redhead take notes and get addresses. Take a lunch break for god’s sake.” Was she drunk? Cain grimaced again.

“The redhead will have April doing burlesque if I leave the two of them alone,” Cain pointed out, sending a gratuitous tight-lipped smile down the table to Rowena.

“Besides,” he added, turning to face Jenn. “Your boy is going to pull something tonight. I can feel it. And I am never wrong.”

“Pssh! Nick’s ass is eggplant-purple. He’s done, Cain. Got it all out of his system.”

“You’ll understand my skepticism, I’m sure,” Cain replied. “Seeing as I’ve known him longer and I fucked him before you graduated high school. I’m telling you. He’s planning something.”

“Thought we already established that Nick is _always_ planning something,” Jenn joked with another shoulder into his arm.

“Blow it off if you want to,” he said darkly. “I’m only responsible for two people at this table, me and that beautiful girl down the way who’s drawing every eye in the room. If Nick sets the place on fire, it’s his funeral. And yours.”

She huffed into her wineglass and changed the subject. “Now that you’re in his Pack, man, you gotta tell me the inside scoop. What’s Novak like? What’s he really like?”

Cain gave her up for a lost cause and collected his menu and his water glass as he stood to seek another chair. The alpha was too soused to help at all. Cain was on his own. He leaned down to whisper into her ear, “He’s intense.”

“I knew it!” she whispered back in a fervent hush.

He put a finger to his lips as he backed away, and she mimicked him, nodding.

If Jenn was drunk at six-thirty, Nick was behind it. Cain had no doubts. Her wily Ozzie needed his alpha out of the way, and that meant that he intended to abscond with Cain’s Ozzie as well. There was no chance Nick meant to leave April behind. He saw himself as April’s mentor, although he was far more a Huck Finn to April’s Tom Sawyer. Whichever way Cain looked at it, it spelled trouble.

What’s more, Cain needed to be within hearing distance of Rowena. The look she was shooting April set Cain on edge. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, exactly. Rowena was good at her job, although not always bound by the strict letter of the law. She would never harm April. He knew that. But Cain and Rowena had different goals where April was concerned. Rowena viewed her, quite understandably, as a cash cow who was destined to make the diminutive Scot filthy rich. And Cain had already made the shift to view his charge as Pack. No amount of good will could ever convince Rowena to pass on a lucrative project for April, and no amount of money would ever convince Cain to put her into a vulnerable position.

If nothing else, Cain knew he would have to answer to both Michael and Castiel if he let someone use her.

So, he watched Rowena.

And he listened, contributing little, letting April soak in the spoils of entertainment industry success before its glitter ultimately wore off and revealed the griminess underneath. She was captivating, he had to admit. The place was an entertainment hot spot, set up for showboating would-be stars. Nick hauled April up to the piano for a couple of songs. The clientele loved it. What’s more important, the manager loved it. Cain slipped the _maître d_ a crisp Benjamin to let them play as long as they liked. It was a ridiculous bribe since Nick all by himself was a boon to the restaurant, but these things weren’t always logical. How it was done would always be how it was done.

Cain kept April in his sights even as he smoothly felt out the players at the table. He eventually ordered April a meal and reeled her in to eat it. Nick followed like a puppy, annoyed that no one had thought to bring a plate for him. He ate most of April’s.

Cain enjoyed seeing her happy. It was keeping her that way that might prove the real challenge. Some of the members of their dinner party were people he never wanted April to know – underhanded, phony, slimy creatures who ate lovely young talent for lunch and left dried husks in their wakes. But there was simply no way to work in this town without feeding the sharks.

That was Cain’s job. April never had to touch that aspect.

That’s assuming he could keep a filter up between April and Rowena. The sophisticated agent would tell his ingenue everything if he gave her half a chance, just to see the color drain from her innocent face. Rowena was ruthless. And conniving. Cain longed to fire her short Gaelic ass and slide Mark Simpson into her spot. Why hadn’t that been the decision from the start?

And the funny thing about that was everyone assumed Cain was the same as Rowena, only he’d never seen the need. Perhaps being alpha bought him tickets to places betas couldn’t go without schemes. But Cain, entirely contrary to his reputation, had always played straight. Oh, he made the sneaky deals, caught glances that weren’t meant to be caught, overheard conversations that were thought to be private, but he never cheated anyone, and he never went back on his word.

Cain didn’t scheme. He _worked._

Rowena couldn’t say the same. Cain knew that for a fact.

“We’re going out front for a quick smoke,” April announced with a touch to his shoulder on her way past with Nick.

“Hey, hey, hey, hold on there, cupcake. You’re not leaving this building without me, and you’re certainly not _smoking._ Do you know what cigarettes do to a performer’s voice?” Cain made a grab for her arm and caught her fingertips. “You barely ate a bite.”

“Please, alpha. It’s only for a moment. I’m not smoking. You know me better than that. It’s Nick. Come on, Cain. Please? You can see us through the window. We’ll stand right there, not three feet away from you.” April turned her pleading eyes to maximum, and the whole table was staring. What a predicament. Cain ran his tongue over his teeth beneath his upper lip. Treating her like a child in front of these people would undo half of what she was trying to accomplish for herself and Omegas everywhere.

But Nick was up to something.

Jenn smirked at him from one end of the table and Rowena from the other.

“Don’t leave my sight, Omega,” he told her sternly. “You have ten minutes.”

She grinned and kissed his cheek before skipping after Nick who waited for her at the exit.

Cain had a brief vision of trying to explain April’s disappearance to an irate Castiel, and it wasn’t a pretty image. He turned his chair and made no pretense that he wasn’t laser focused on her. She spied him through the window and suffered him an amused and exasperated shrug. He didn’t share her lightheartedness. But then, he wasn’t she.

Their roles were different.

And that’s why, when it happened, Cain was totally at a loss as to how. One moment April was leaning into the glass window shoulder-to-shoulder with Nick, and the next, Nick had dropped his butt to crush it under his heel before bending down to tie his shoe or collect a stray quarter or…whatever. He drew April’s focus to the ground beside him, and she doubled over as well, leaning low to investigate whatever had him fixated. Cain leaned forward, peering over the low transom, but just that fast, they were both gone.

He jumped to his feet, scanning in all directions, fuming. He cast along his bond and found a trace of her down the street to his right, but she snuffed the link almost as soon as he sensed it.

_”Goddamnit!”_

He scowled at Jenn; whose face had grown ashen. She appeared nauseated. “They can’t have gone far,” she tried helplessly.

“The hell they can’t,” he growled. “Come on. Move your ass. Think. Where would Nick take her?” He frog-marched her out the door, dropping a wad of bills at the front station to cover the table. If he lost his Ozzie, wasting Castiel’s cash would be the least of his worries. “I’m going to kill them both!”

Jenn stood stock still in the middle of the sidewalk with her eyes nearly closed, sniffing the wind, casting for something traceable. Cain pulled up the geo app on his phone and set it to searching for April’s phone.

“Come on, c’mon! Damnit!” he chanted. “I’m going to kill that reprobate!”

“Hey.” Jenn’s eyes flashed red and steely at the same time. “That reprobate is not yours to kill.” There was real danger in her tone.

Cain growled in disgust and took off down the sidewalk in the direction he’d felt April vanish. His phone seemed stuck on “Searching.” Jenn caught him up. “Darius, calm down. He knows cities. He knows L.A. He can take care of himself. He’ll keep her safe.”

Cain turned on his heel, brought a forearm up and flattened Jenn against the wall in a flash. He pressed hard enough into her throat to bulge her eyes and cut off her air supply. He brought his face awfully close to hers, exuding deadly calm. He licked his lips and regarded her, red-faced and struggling.

“It isn’t Nicholas Maraby’s job to keep April safe though, is it? Don’t you threaten me, alpha. _Find. Them.”_

“Y..ea…ah,” she choked, beating on his arm until he removed it and went back to his phone and the chaotic street in front of him as if he hadn’t just had her breath in his power.

“Gimme a second. Nick spends a lot of time in this city. I need to think. Where would he take her?” Jenn babbled, scrunching her face. “Somewhere he wants her to see or…experience. Somewhere he knows you’d never allow her to go.” Jenn snapped her fingers, a lightbulb popping in her mind. “I got it. I know where they’re going. We need a cab.” Jenn set two fingers into her mouth and brought a passing taxi to an immediate halt with an ear-splitting whistle. Cain scrambled in behind her, scowling as if his life depended on the hardness of his expression.

“Where to, alphas?”

“Bandit Highway,” Jenn told the cabbie. “You know it?” Cain sighed.

“Now, you alphas must be from out of town,” the driver scoffed. “That place is a myth. Doesn’t exist. How about you let me take you somewhere nice. Somewhere real. I got you.”

Jenn handed a wad of cash forward. “Don’t fuck with me, bud. I’m from New York. I eat Angelenos for fucking breakfast. Take us there. Now.”

“Look, I don’t know where it is,” the cabbie admitted, looking nervous. “They move it around. Different spot all the time. It pops up with no warning. Usually somewhere nice-looking New Yorkers like you don’t wanna be, and there aren’t a lot of taxis running that side of town, if you know what I mean.”

“Then you’d better figure out how you’re going to track it down, don’t you think?” Jenn argued. “Unless you think a couple of alphas like us don’t mean business.”

“Yeah, all right. You’re not gonna like it though. People always think they want to go slumming until they get stuck walking forty blocks past the worst this city has to offer. And I’ll tell you another thing. I’m not waiting around for you to change your mind. You pay me now. I take you there. I drop you. You get out. I’m gone. We clear?”

“Just drive,” Cain told him.

The cabbie texted rapidly into his cell phone, muttering unhappily. “Gotta hunt it down first. They don’t exactly hang signs on the door.”

They’re not here!” Cain shouted the obvious over the noise after picking his way through sticky, meandering, smoky aisles, if aisles they could be called. The cacophony coming from the stage set his last nerve aflame. It was hideous.

“They will be!” Jenn assured him, hollering over the noise. She squinted through the haze at the seat of a chair that looked to have been pulled out of a landfill. “Have a seat. They’ll come to us.”

“Unless they get tangled up in something else first,” Cain observed. A million scenarios ran through his head. This horror of a club was no place for April. Hell, it was no place for anyone higher on the evolutionary ladder than a cockroach. The stench of stale urine mixed with the sickening stench of fresh urine. And vomit. And, god, what was that smell? Cain pinched his nostrils and huffed to clear his sinuses.

He debated texting home. But if he did that, Cas would phone him straightaway, and he couldn’t field a phone call amid this din. Better to wait. At least a little while.

“This is a goddamn catastrophe,” he moaned, sinking into a chair beside Jenn.

“No. Look! Five o’clock. At the corner by the door.”

“Thank fuck,” he muttered, rising fluidly to his feet and stalking across the distance.

Nick had his head low to speak to April, waving now and then to people who called out to him. Cain descended on the pair like the angel of death, taking each of them by an upper arm, pivoting them on the spot, and marching away from the tumult. Up slimy basement steps they stormed, barreling over the incoming throng, fish swimming against the current.

“Alpha, wait! We need to stay!” April tugged against his hold, but she had no chance of fighting loose without ripping her arm off altogether. Cain hustled her free without sparing her a look or a word. “There’s a musician I need to meet! He wouldn’t meet us anywhere else. Cain, please! Would you just wait?”

But he didn’t wait. He hardly waited for her scuffling feet to keep up, much less slow to hold a conversation. Nick stumbled along willingly enough, no complaints on his lips, only an ironic half-smile as he waved at highly amused fans here and there. They drew catcalls and whistles. Cain didn’t slow until he’d put four blocks between them and that godawful screech.

Cain was no purist. Music could be whatever an artist deemed it should be. It could be dissonant. It could be painful if there was a purpose. But this? This was just bad. Nothing good could possibly come from a meeting here. He prayed she hadn’t been photographed. Her hairpin was no longer in her hair, and he prayed she’d had the good sense to tuck it somewhere for safe keeping. Heaven help them both if she’d lost it.

At what appeared to be a reasonably empty, well-lit intersection, Cain pulled them both around to face him and towered over them, furious. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Nick looked away, casually lifting his free hand to acknowledge a cheerful whoop from a passing pedestrian heading toward the underground club. April bit her lip, still outfitted for a much different audience. A car blasted its horn as it blew past.

“Aw, alpha, let ‘em go,” someone jeered.

Jenn caught up.

Cain shoved Nick toward her in disgust. “You are not my problem,” he told the obstreperous Ozzie. “Get out of my sight. Tonight’s studio session is canceled. Pray I don’t cancel the rest as well. Go away.”

“Darius…” Nick began, winding up to appeal to the greater good for her career. But Cain took one half-step toward him with a livid glower on his face, and Nick wisely buttoned it.

Resituating his hold on April’s shoulder instead of her upper arm, Cain turned and stalked off, marching her before him and calculating the fastest way back to the hotel.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” she grumbled.

“Save it.”

“But if you would just listen.”

Cain ground to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk and faced her. “What did he tell you? That no one makes it in this business without spending some time under the rocks with the worms? That you must pay your dues in the rough places so you can learn how real music is made? Meet the real business insiders who don’t show their faces where the light shines? He’s trying to make you walk the path he did, but it’s all a fraud, April. Don’t you get it? Maybe that helped fifteen years ago when no one thought an Ozzie could tie his own shoes, much less break into show business. But if there was ever any truth to that myth, it’s over now. The business has changed, and it isn’t his job to pave a path for you anyway, it’s mine. Now, march. We need to get back to the hotel and call home.”

“No, alpha, please!”

Cain set off again, this time taking her by the hand and hauling her along in his wake. It didn’t take long to find a bus route and work his way back to streets he felt safer for his Ozzie. They didn’t speak anymore until the doorman opened the door to the lobby of their hotel, a welcome sight.

“Everything’s canceled?” April asked in a small voice. “I have commitments.”

Cain growled and jammed a finger into the elevator button, pushing it two or three more times just for punctuation. “You are in a world of trouble, missy,” he told her. “Count yourself lucky we’re not boarding a plane and flying straight home. You lied to me.”

She wilted, waiting for the elevator with her cheek held between her teeth.

“Where’s your hair pin?”

“In my pocket.”

The elevator arrived. Cain began to feel safe. It was a slow process though. There were still eyes on her.

As the door closed on its springs behind them in their suite, April lifted her dress over her head, kicked her shoes off, and sank to the floor into her Submissive kneeling position. Cain put his phone to his ear with a sense of pacing inevitably toward his own gallows.

Castiel answered.

“Sir, she’s safe. She’s fine. We’re in the hotel,” Cain began with assurances, knowing Cas was likely to panic. “But there’s been a hiccup.”

_”What happened?”_ There was the tone that Cain’s body responded to unwittingly. He turned his back – and thus his groin – on April.

“She and Nick hatched a plan to go slum-diving in search of music underground insiders. She managed to lose me for an hour or so and make it to a place neither of us thinks she has any business in.” There. That pretty much summed it up. In his mind, Cain went over his will, his insurance policies and beneficiaries, his end of life business arrangements.

Silence from the other end of the line.

“Alpha?” he asked. “Castiel?”

Nothing.

“Sir, Jenn and I tracked them down. I brought her home. No harm done. She’s fine. I’ve canceled tonight’s studio session, and I’ll be dealing appropriately with her for the infractions to your rules. I knew you would need to know what happened.”

“Put her on the phone,” Castiel told him in clipped words.

Cain sighed and held his cellphone out to April. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. Her mouth dropped slack. Cain had to waggle the phone at her before she took it.

“S-Sir?”

Cain strolled away, giving her a modicum of privacy considering the chewing out was not going to be pleasant. He rummaged a bottle of water out of the mini-fridge and leaned against the kitchenette counter while he drank. He couldn’t hear the Alpha’s words, but he could see April’s face grow pale and regretful. She ‘Yessir’d’ into the phone more times than Cain felt possible in such a short time before finally holding the phone back out for Cain.

Cain returned and took it from her, holding a chilled bottle of water out to her with a pointed look. Once she took the water and put it to her lips, Cain put the phone back to his ear.

“Alpha,” he said.

_”Darius, I trusted you with the safety and welfare of my mate. But you’ve failed to keep her under your care. Expect to pay for that when I arrive on Sunday.”_

Cain cleared his throat. “Yes, Sir. Is…is that all?”

Castiel huffed in impatience. _”Is there more to this incident than you’ve told me?”_ he asked.

“No, Sir.”

_”Then, I believe one reprimand will be sufficient. See that you impress upon my mate that in my absence she continues to be bound by the same expectations she is under at home. I trust you won’t fuck that up. She’s depending on you, alpha.”_

“Yes, Sir.”

_”And Cain. You did well to call me. Had you waited, had you attempted to keep this incident from me, even overnight, you would be searching for new employment in the morning. As it is, you may consider yourself on probation.”_

“Understood, Sir.”

_”I won’t countermand your decision to cancel tonight’s session,”_ Cas went on coldly. _”But her career is not a carrot for you to use to control her. If you can’t manage her health and safety without threatening to take her work from her, then you are the wrong person for this role. Consider your choices carefully.”_

“Yes, Sir,” Cain repeated. Now all of April’s ‘Yessirs’ made sense. Cain’s conversation sounded no different from this end of the phone. He ended the call with a sense of having barely survived. It was relief and dread both. Castiel wasn’t finished with him, and he deserved whatever was hanging over his head. Cain’s rarely seen Submissive side had begun a petition in the back of his head for accountability, and he wouldn’t find peace until he stood before Castiel and paid what he owed.

But first, he needed to complete the same circle for April.

Her head faced her thighs. Her fingers fidgeted. Random muscles flinched across her shoulders and her back. Cain paced a slow circle around her.

“You lied to me,” he reminded her. “You ran from me. You hid from me. You closed your bond and turned off your cellphone.”

He rounded back to the front and looked down upon the top of her head. She looked tiny like this, curled over on herself with not a stitch of clothing covering her body. She was an entirely different person than the vibrant young talent who charmed a theater full of people this afternoon and took them all on a bigger-than-life musical adventure by way of her piano and her passion.

“What was it you said in the car?” he asked rhetorically. “Oh, yes. You said, ‘I’m not stupid’ in answer to a warning about following Nick’s schemes.” Reaching down, Cain lifted her chin. “You’re _not_ stupid, April. And that tells me that you intended to ditch me from the beginning. How long have you two been planning this?”

April’s eyes stared plaintively up at him, remorseful. “A while,” she admitted. “He told me you and the others can only take me so far, and I believed him. He told me I have to get in with the street crowd to have any credibility where the real work, the revolutionary work, is being done. He said you and Mark are setting me up to be a show pony.”

“How does that seem now?” Cain narrowed his eyes.

April swallowed. He released her chin. “How do I tell who’s right?” she asked. “He’s the only Ozzie ever to make it this big, and he did it mostly on his own. I can’t disregard that. I don’t want to be a boy band with brand merch and a choreographed light show. Don’t you get how important this is to me?”

“I do,” he squatted right down in front of her, abandoning his towering hover. “I really do. April, my entire life is predicated on making you exactly the kind of success you most want to be. Now, if you don’t have the chops or the work ethic or anything sellable about what’s coming out your fingertips, I can’t manufacture it for you. But you do, love. You’ve got a vision and a voice that people crave. Your generation needs a voice, and you can be that if you work hard enough. But – and kid I can’t stress this enough – how you get there is not your responsibility. The reason you can’t tell who’s right and who’s wrong is because you’re too inexperienced, too green, and because your designations tangle you up. You’re stepping out of your sandbox where you don’t belong.”

April frowned. “Nick did it by himself.”

“No, he didn’t. I was there, Omega. I know better. He’s got his own designation tangles, and one of those includes delusions of grandeur that bear little truth to fact. What got Nick through the door was a dinner party where a Broadway producer heard him play and started talking projects. That led to a deal to create something experimental which exploded bigger than anyone anticipated. Nick has an ear for raw talent, a knack for fitting in with any crowd, a photographic memory for faces and connections, and more charm than anyone has a right to. Plus, he’s utterly fearless. But he didn’t make it on Broadway because he tied his street cred down with a sleazy underground network that secretly runs the entertainment industry. That’s his mythos. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn he believes it himself at this point. But it’s bullshit. And you need nothing from those people.”

She blinked.

Cain stood up and sighed heavily. “Look, Nick cares about exactly three things. He cares about his music. He cares about helping talented Omegas get the start they need to leave an impression on the world. And he cares about pissing off his alpha bad enough to get wailed on three times a week. He’s lawless, and he burns everyone who stays close to him for too long.”

“Are we talking about me or you?” she posed, glancing up without lifting her head.

“He used you for a joyride, April. You’re so much smarter than this.”

She lowered her eyes again.

“From right this minute, you and I need to form an iron-clad pact. I need you to be completely honest with me.” Cain planted himself several feet in front of her kneeling body with his feet apart and his arms folded across his chest. “Look at me.”

She breathed in. And out again. And then she raised her head proudly.

“Can you trust me?” he asked. When she paused, he clarified. “I’m not asking if you do right now. Clearly, you don’t. And I accept that. I have work to do to prove that I can give you the path you’re looking for. I know that following Nick got you here to the Grammys. He’s a mentor to you, and I can respect what he’s done for you. As a musician, you won’t find a better role model. But as a manager, April… … …I can do this. I know what I’m doing. But I can’t do my job if you’re trying to do it for me. I won’t try to write a sonata. You stay out of the business of selling sonatas.”

She cracked a small smile

“So, think it over,” he concluded. “You can only have one manager. Either that’s me, or it isn’t. If you think you can learn to trust me, I swear to you that you can count on my dedicated service for as long as you have a career to promote. If you can’t, I will step down as manager, focus on being your chaperone and bodyguard, and we’ll hire someone else to run your business. One thing I’m sure of though, there’s no one else out there who can do for you what I can from right inside our own Pack. You never have to wonder where my loyalties lie, April. Your success, defined however you choose to define it, is my entire purpose for living. I’ve found my calling. I believe in you. But to do my job, I need you to believe in me too.”

Her brow drew into troubled lines across her forehead.

“Don’t answer right now,” he decided. “Think it through. We’ll pick it back up when we get home.”

She nodded with a contrite frown.

“For now, we need to address the other side of our relationship. As your substitute alpha and chaperone, I cannot excuse what you did. Running from me this evening was a dangerous stunt. You broke Pack rules. You broke _our_ rules. And you will be punished. On your feet.”

“yessir.” She rose gracefully.

Cain sat down on the suite’s oversized couch, right in the middle, and he beckoned. April trudged toward him until he leaned toward her and took her by the wrist to hurry her along. He pulled her over his lap, backside to the ceiling, face to the floor. He set to work, spanking the meat of her ass forcefully with his hand, meaning every strike to sting. He sent hard, loud smacks up to reverberate off the lofted ceiling and echo around the spacious sitting room. He covered both cheeks, catching her wayward hand when it broke free and splayed across her hot skin, and pinning it to her back without comment.

Cain was in no hurry. With nowhere else to be tonight, their schedule had suddenly opened, and he was entirely free to take his time. He spanked. And he spanked. And she writhed under his assault. But he pinned her legs with his right calf. And he spanked. Until she cried loudly, Released with an audible crack, and stopped fighting at all.

Cain was no disciplinarian. He had often been accused of having a stern and forbidding presence, but dispensing corrective discipline was an obligation to the man rather than a pleasure. He did what needed doing. Doing it well was a point of pride. April mattered to him in a way no client ever had before. Cain knew that had more to do with how Castiel had framed the role when he hired the man than it did anything else. Castiel hadn’t been kidding around when he selected Cain. He sought an alpha who could step right into Cas’ shoes whenever the mates needed to be separated. And Cain had swallowed that pill whole. April was more than his charge. She was the daughter he would never have. She was becoming his whole world. He brought his hand down in a powerful shower of blows that sent her back arching and wails escaping her throat.

At length, he slowed to a stop and set his hot hand on the backs of her thighs. He allowed the tactile presence of her heaving back and sweating skin convince him she was here. Was safe. Hadn’t been murdered or drugged or raped or kidnapped or… She was safe.

“Don’t disobey me like that again, Omega.”

“No, Sir,” she sniffled, looking over her shoulder.

“Go get my cane from my bag,” he instructed. He helped her up and swatted the back of her hand when she moved to rub the sting out of her cherry-red ass. She knew better. Castiel had her trained to perfection. She was testing him.

In fact, he reflected as she stumbled into his bedroom and back out again, her disappearing act with Nick itself had likely been a test of Cain’s resolve more than a professional crisis in the first place. If she was testing him, he considered, this last round with the cane ought to put the defining touches on that speculation. He took it from her when she presented it formally to him, holding it before her in two hands and lowering her head in deference. Cain heaved himself to his feet – spanking is an exhausting business – and shook each leg back to life.

“This is it, Omega. After this, you’re forgiven. We’ll say no more about it, me and you.” He pointed her around the couch and bent her over the back. “Keep your feet planted, please. You’re getting ten, and they are going to be ten of my best. I know you can take far more than this. I’m not trying to push your limits. This is crime and punishment. That’s all. Here we go.”

Cain touched the cane to the middle of her butt, just where the redness peaked. He set his feet to be sure of his swing, and he whipped the cane back and brought it in with a zip. Her breath caught. Her back tightened up. Her feet didn’t budge.

“Count, please.”

“One,” she squeaked breathlessly.

Again, he let the cane fly. Again, she sucked in an aborted breath and then managed a weak count into her arms. Her ass welted, swelling instantly to show him where he’d struck. In the bond they shared, Cain could feel the sensations as he laid them down. She counted three, four, five, in a steady rhythm.

He could feel how her brain processed the reprimand, feel it working, doing its magic inside her. Ozzies like April craved structure and accountability in a unique way. She needed this. It was far more than cause and effect or negative reinforcement. It fed her soul in a manner Cain couldn’t quite relate to. Where he too carried a primal need to account for his misdeeds, his was a need to reset himself back to rights, back to where he belonged. An Ozzie didn’t truly have a singular position that could be defined as ‘where she belonged’. Her ‘right position’ was a constantly swinging pendulum, the apex that marked misbehavior no less authentic than the quiet, settled passivity of a well-balanced Omega mind. The key for Ozzies was to manufacture the full swing of that pendulum such that it reached those peaks at a time and in a way that they could be managed in private, on a schedule that didn’t cripple them in the public eye or sabotage their work-lives.

An alpha like Cain was well off his reservation when his behaviors broke rules. An Ozzie was in the thick of hers.

Cain whipped the cane to mark the crease of her ass, and for a moment, she flattened into the back of the couch and rolled half to her side, looking upward in distress. Wracking sobs obscured her count.

“Four more, April. You’ve withstood far worse than this before. I expect better. Back into position.”

“I’m sorry,” she sniveled as she rolled back and set her feet beneath her. “I’m so sorry.”

“From now on,” he told her, “anything Nick suggests for the two of you, anything you know is unacceptable, you are to bring it to me. Sneak off like that again, and you will face far worse.”

He swapped the cane down again, and she dutifully counted out a “Seven.” Her legs shivered.

Sitting through the awards ceremony and after-party weren’t going to be comfortable.

Cain shifted his stance, balancing on the balls of his feet, and then put his hips into his swing, landing a hard stripe at the top of her thighs. She screamed and bent her knees. She covered her head with both hands and rocked in misery, going slack over the couch.

“How many, April?”

“Eight,” she murmured amid sobs.

“Did you really expect I wouldn’t track you down and haul you back here? Did you think there wouldn’t be a price to pay? Did Nick convince you it was a harmless jaunt to go skating across the city without a guard? Or did he convince you that there was no other way to meet up with whoever it is he thinks your career can’t live without?”

“I believed him,” she sniffled.

“Perhaps next time you’ll reconsider giving your trust to someone who loves the thrill of the chase more than he cares about your welfare.” Cain struck her again with a whistle through air and a mighty _Smack._

“Nine. Yessir.”

“Are we ever going to have to revisit this topic?” he asked sternly.

“Nosir.”

“No,” he agreed. And he whipped her mid-thigh, raising a welt on each leg in stark, vivid red and eliciting a bawling wail. Her heels lifted and thumped back down repeatedly. Her head, still hidden under her arms, rolled back and forth over the cushion.

Cain set his stick on the bureau before scooping her up bodily and carrying her through to her room, laying her down in the middle of the bed. She curled into him and wept pathetically.

Her stroked her hair and wiped her nose. He arranged her to snuggle into his chest with both of his arms around her. He delved into her head and carded his own mind into the wisps of her skittering thoughts, bringing peace and acceptance.

“You scared me,” Cain admitted softly once her sobs died down to weak snuffles. “You mean a lot to me, April. I love you far more than I knew I could love anyone after Colin. I thought I might have lost you.”

She blinked and pressed her cheek deeper into his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It seemed like an adventure.”

He huffed, ruffling her hair. “I know I’m not young and exciting,” he breathed. “But next time you need an adventure, take me along.”

She chuckled. “You wouldn’t have let us go.”

“No, probably not. But if it’s excitement you’re craving, I have some ideas. You don’t have to listen to Nicholas.”

She didn’t reply for a moment, lost in her settling thoughts, digesting the pain throbbing from her ass and thighs. “I was testing you, wasn’t I?”

“I think so,” Cain replied. He craned his head to look down at her. “Did you determine where our boundary lines are?”

“Mm-hm,” she smiled. “Loud and clear.” She adjusted position to roll further up onto her side to relieve the pressure on her backside, shifting more of her weight onto the alpha’s solid body. He kissed the top of her hair. “Are you in trouble at home?” she asked.

“Mm,” Cain admitted. “I lost custody of the Alpha’s mate in a large, unfriendly city. The accounting won’t be pleasant.”

“God, yeah, I’m sorry, alpha. I didn’t even consider that.”

Cain drew in a deep breath that lifted his ribcage and the Ozzie along with it. He could drive the point home with a reminder that her choices often had ramifications above and beyond just her own punishments, but the truth was, losing her in the city was on him, and he needed to stand and take the reprimand for it without dumping it onto April. He’d known before they ever walked into that restaurant that Nick would try to pull something, and Cain had allowed the two Ozzies to walk right out the door against every protective instinct he had honed over a lifetime of training.

The decision to flee was on April. But the success of the flight was on Cain.

“Don’t give it another thought, April. My mistakes are not your responsibility.”

“Tomorrow’s meetings, are those canceled too?” she asked in a small voice.

“No. No, you have important work to do before Sunday night. I shouldn’t have scrubbed tonight’s work either. I apologize for that. I was angry and upset. I needed you indoors in a place I control. That’s not a response I can justify when there are other professionals depending on you to show up.”

She mulled it over with a crinkle marring her brow. “I think I was relieved when you brought us back here instead of taking me to the studio. Maybe I’m anxious about these sessions. They’re all seasoned professionals, Cain. I’m just a kid.”

“Ah,” he responded. “There’s the other shoe I was waiting for. That’s the last puzzle piece. Everything makes sense. Okay. We can handle this. You hungry?”

“A little.”

“Let’s doctor your butt and I’ll call down for some dinner. Up you go.”

She rolled across the bed, hissing as she sat up. “I don’t need to think about it,” she told him vaguely as he helped her to her feet.

“Hm?” He braced her as he guided her to the bathroom.

“About you being my manager,” she clarified. “I want you, Cain, not someone else. I trust you. I do.”

He huffed a stilted laugh. He rifled through his toiletries, dug out a soothing paste, and turned her to face away to smooth it across her welts. “What about our division of duties? Yours and mine? Three jobs? Are you able to stick to that?”

She stood braced against the bathroom counter, leaning into her elbows while he covered her sore ass in a cool balm. She watched him through the mirror. “I’m scared, alpha.”

“I know,” he agreed, standing straight, looking her backside over for any missed spots. “But that’s not one of your jobs. Managing your fears is on my list, not yours. I have ways of helping you through your anxiety until you get embedded in your work and the fear evaporates. Which it always does once you’re actually working.” He met her eye through the mirror with a pointed look.

“And if it doesn’t? What if these studio sessions prove I’m a spoiled rich kid whose Pack Alpha mate is trying to buy her a spot in the big leagues and who has no real business in a room where the grownups are working?” April turned to face him. She looked up into his face, searching his eyes for a lie she expected.

He threw his head back and laughed. She hit him in the middle of his chest.

Gaining control of himself, he placed a hand on each of her shoulders and lowered his head to meet her eyes. “A Grammy nomination, April. A Tony award, maybe two. Those don’t get handed out to people who bought their way in. You belong in that room. You belong with these musicians. All that fear will vanish the instant you and they start talking notes and rhythms and key signatures. You’re no imposter. And you’re not a child. You’re one of the grownups in this conversation, and those people _want_ to hear what you have to contribute.”

She stared into his blue eyes, drinking every word, desperate to believe him but finding it hard to fit her Omega’s self-image into the picture he was drawing.

“April, I didn’t have to beg people to collaborate with you while you’re here. I had to beat them off with a stick. We got the picking rights. You’ve got it all backward in your head. This isn’t you, a shy, sweet kid on the playground begging to be allowed to play in the cool kids’ sandbox. This is a line of cool kids that goes all the way around the block falling over each other to be noticed by you.”

“That makes no sense!” she protested. “I have four songs to my name! They don’t know me!”

“They will,” Cain told her. “Everyone will.”

***************

Cas was a nervous wreck, but he looked like a million bucks in his tux. Dean tucked his chin over his husband’s shoulder, wrapping arms around the Alpha’s middle and rocking him slightly as they locked eyes onto an enormous screen mounted high above their heads in the ballroom where Nick’s guests awaited the big show.

Live footage of glamorous stars and performers rolled across the screen.

“Who’s sexier, do you think?” Dean posed, watching the screen. “Keith Urban or Shawn Mendes?”

“I can’t watch this,” Cas moaned. “I don’t know any of these people. I don’t understand what they’re saying. I feel like she’s a guppy in a school of sharks. I want her out of there. I changed my mind. Let’s see if we can get her a spot in the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra.”

“Cas, you’re going to have to chill. This bullshit comes with the territory.” Dean checked his phone when it buzzed. “She says they’re pulling up next. This is us, babe. Look.”

“Oh, God.”

“If you’re gonna puke, aim for the ice bucket instead of the carpet.”

On the screen above, a dark limo pulled up, and Michael emerged. On the far side, hardly in the camera’s view at all, Cain slid out and rounded the front of the car to disappear entirely. Michael grinned radiantly and waved as noise from the crowd became an uproar. He leaned down, extending his hand, and drew April from the car with the grace of a dancer.

Cas squeezed the blood from Dean’s hand.

“Unclench your jaw, Alpha,” Dean whispered. “Enjoy this moment. _Look_ at them!”

But Cas was scanning the crowd for gunmen. The soles of his feet broke out in a cold sweat. All the blood left his face.

Dean swayed him slowly from behind. He kissed the side of Castiel’s neck, his eyes glued to their mates onscreen. “Look at them, C.J.,” he repeated at a whisper.

Michael placed a guiding arm around April, his hand possessively in the small of her back, and the two made their way along the red carpet like royalty. They moved as one, each shifting with the motion of the other, making way and filling in, flowing more than walking. They looked Mated.

“You’re a fucking genius,” Dean observed into Cas’ ear. “I ever tell you that? This is perfect gameplay. We’ve got the media and the public eating out of Michael’s hand now. None of the fearmongering from either wing of the opposition has any traction. They can’t convince people he’s a psychopath when he glows like _that_ in a tuxedo. Jesus, man, Michael could run for office if he wanted to, and he’d win in a landslide. This is working.”

“We’re in deadly waters, Winchester. One wrong move, and we’re finished.” Cas clutched Dean’s hands at his belly.

“Maybe. But we’re not going to make any wrong moves. Michael understands his role. He’s not going to fuck this up. Look at us, man.” Dean laughed. “We switched places. Thought I was the irrational one. But I’m loving this. Jesus, they’re gorgeous.”

Dean fell silent as the two approached a reporter and charmed her with wit and joy and effervescence. Cas breathed a sigh of relief when both April and Michael handled the short interview like veterans. Soon, the camera focus shifted to the next celebrity, and Michael guided April away.

Cas turned in Dean’s arms and lay his cheek on Dean’s shoulder.

“Just be grateful we have Michael, so you don’t have to do it,” Dean joshed. “The next five hours of sitting and listening to speech after speech is going to be awful. At least here we get food and drink and dancing. Wanna dance?”

“Um, no. I don’t want to dance.” Castiel’s gaze drifted into the distance, searching April’s emotions. He pulled away, wandering toward their table with his head in his phone. Dean chuckled to himself and followed. He, too, sent a querying touch down his Mating-bonds to touch base with the Omega at its other end, but he left his phone in his pocket. Social media could buzz along without him. Someone would fill him in on anything he missed if it were important.

Cas sat down without looking, nearly missing his chair. He scrolled through Twitter and Instagram, hunting for the take on the two Omegas’ appearance as a couple with no alpha mates in sight. “First impressions seem to be shock mostly,” he commented when Dean joined him and poured two glasses of Chardonnay.

“Good shock or bad shock?” Dean asked.

“Surprised shock at this point,” Cas replied. His eyes skipped across the screen of his phone. “The most common question I see is about whether she and I have parted ways.”

“You can answer that, you know. Tweet something.” Dean took a drink and then nudged Castiel’s glass closer to his husband with two fingers at its base. “And drink something. Need you to lighten up a little.”

Cas shook his head, continuing his scrolling. “Billie’s managing our social media response. She threatened me life and limb if I did anything but read.”

Dean scoffed. “It’s fraud to have someone else post to your accounts in your stead, Alpha.”

“I’m in no mood, Dean.” Cas imbued his voice with a warning tone that pinked Dean’s ears. “You’re pushing. Don’t.”

“You’re jumping at shadows,” Dean told him earnestly. “We thought of everything. It’s going to go smoothly because there are no loose ends. Let Billie do her job. Let Michael do his. Let April have the night of her life, even if she can barely sit down after you blasted her halfway across California with your switch. You and I have an evening to ourselves, man. All gussied up, no pups, no staff, no mates. Just you and me and a bottle of wine or two. C’mon, Cas, look at me. Don’t I look nice for you?”

That brought Castiel’s head out of his phone, and he did indeed appear chagrined. He set the phone down.

“You look wonderful, Dean. You always look amazing. I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“We’re going to ride the momentum and surf it straight into a whole new world, C.J. Billie will let us know if anything starts to swing wide. If she needs your input, I promise you we’ll know about it. Letting your Ozzie mate attend the Grammys on the arm of a man who flattened a cult with nothing but his voice proves everything we’ve been preaching for years. Once they get over their shock, they’ll see it for what it is. He’s not a psychopath. If he were dangerous, you wouldn’t trust him with this. Our messaging is working because it’s not bullshit. So, calm down. Drink your wine. And come dance with me. I’ll even let you lead.”

On the big screen behind them, the station cut for a commercial break, choosing a replay of Michael walking April down the red carpet in the sunshine as its lead-out. April was radiant. Michael, luminous. They were magnificent together, made to accentuate one another’s beauty. Cas gulped an inordinate amount of wine in one slug and then closed his eyes and chanted his mantrum inside his head. Dean pressed a hand into his thigh and massaged his mind through their bond.

“You’re right,” Cas told him. He set his glass down and stood up. “Let’s dance. You’re not leading though. You’ll follow my lead like the good boy you are, or I’ll take you over my knee in front of all of Nick’s guests.”

Dean grinned. “Promise?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wraps up a section. I plan to jump a few years into the future from here. Apologies for shorting you on some of the hanging plotlines. The big ones carry through.
> 
> Deep, deep thanks for everyone who has continued to follow this story.
> 
> Finally, if you're an eligible U.S. voter, make a voting plan now and make sure you carry it through come hell or high water or plague or pestilence.


	17. Saturday, August 7, 2021

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A morning at the park lightens the Alpha's spirits and revs his engines - although honestly, what doesn't rev Alpha's engines? Sarah drills down into the crux of what differentiates a wolf from an ape. Our beloved butler is showing his age, foreshadowing that no one lives forever even if it's just something he ate. April drops a bomb that Michael is in no way prepared to catch.
> 
> And it looks like three years is about long enough to wait before cranking up the old baby-making factory again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot going on in this chapter, much more than I first anticipated. I jumped forward about two and a half years from where we were, bringing the timeline a year past the present moment. All kinds of things are still going on out in the wider world: Michael is deeply engaged in exploring his own strangeness, and he's letting the research teams tag along. The media junket is full steam ahead with all four main characters (and Sam) riding the churning waves of fame to keep getting their message across. Dean's still working on taming his own stability issues while simultaneously building a network of wolf resources for helping others do the same. They are all very busy and kicking it in the ass. At home, pups are growing, relationships are maturing, and some things stay exactly the same.
> 
> *edit: I fucked up the timeline initially, because I cannot math, and I had to go back and add a year to the date-stamp on this and the next chapters. 2021, not 2020. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

NOW:

Lupinicity – Chapter 17 – Saturday, August 8, 2020

NOW:

Castiel sat back upon the wooden bench at the periphery of the playground with one ankle crossed up on his opposite knee, entirely at ease. He stretched an arm along the length of the bench and inhaled to his lungs’ content, taking in the barely perceptible scent of wolves at peace, at play. He watched Dean push Jimmy in the swing. Dean’s grin echoed across Cas’ face, an unintentional mirror. Out further in the dog park, down by the pond, along the running trail, under trees, and sprinkled about on the vast green lawn, Lupins carried on with a relaxed Saturday air, unhampered by the restrictions of society on the other side of the tall, thick hedges.

In here, wolves could be wolves. And they made good on that allowance. Some of them shed their clothing at the entrance and let the sun warm their bodies the way nature intended. Some coupled playfully or filthily, lost in their own little bubbles of connection. Some, like the Winchester alphas and their pups, enjoyed the sense of unburdening without really altering their behaviors beyond what an outing to any public playground would have looked like. No amount of assimilation could ever alleviate the tension across their shoulders of being in shared spaces and knowing that anything they might do or say could as easily be misinterpreted as unacceptable. Spaces where only wolves entered made all the difference.

“Kat, kiddo, you have to let others on the slide too,” Dean called from behind the arc of Jimmy’s swing. “Slide down or step back. Take turns like O-Pop taught you.” He didn’t leave his post, but he had his eyes on his daughter, watching to see if she obeyed or not. The relaxed set of Dean’s shoulders spoke to there being no other place in the world he’d rather be in this moment. Cas felt crinkles form at the corners of his eyes as he looked passively on. His phone in his right hand was dark with disuse.

Cas chuckled all the more when Kat’s eyes cut quickly from her Daddy to her Papa, checking if she was in trouble. A ripple from Dean through their shared bond told Castiel that Dean saw her check and that it irritated him not to be obeyed on his own authority. Cas raised his brow at his daughter in silent expectation, and she hustled to settle her butt on the slide with a “Yessa,” and pushed off.

Dean soon joined him on the bench after extricating J.D. from the swing and encouraging him to join Idgie in the sandbox. Dean leaned back into Castiel’s stretched left arm, hinting that it should rather lie across his shoulders than along the back of the bench. Cas accommodated him.

“You’re not helping,” Dean observed.

“What? I backed you up.” Cas thumbed his phone back to active and frowned at his Twitter feed, having forgotten which thread he meant to follow.

“No, you agreed with me. Not the same thing.”

“Sorry,” Cas replied, looking up to check that his brood was all healthy and happy and socially engaged. Kat had a toddler by the hand and was escorting the boy up wide, low stairs toward the slide while the boy’s mother looked on in amusement. Alex and two or three other children were flinging pebbles up into the branches of a tree, playing a game of their own devising. Jimmy and Emma seemed to have teamed up to create the largest sand pile the sandbox could support. “What would you rather I had done?”

Dean nudged him with his shoulder. “What about, ‘Listen to your Dad, young lady’? Direct her back to me. ‘S’all I’m asking.”

“It amounts to the same thing, Dean,” Cas countered logically. “You gave her an instruction, and I essentially stood beside you. It seems to me I’m being more supportive by not adding my voice where yours has already stated the imperative. I think what’s got you irritated is that she looked to me for confirmation at all, but we don’t control that.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to look so smug about it,” Dean grumbled, sliding down on his tailbone and tugging Cas’ arm tighter around him. He snuggled into his husband’s side and turned his face to the sunshine with his eyes closed. Castiel’s chuckle was soft.

“If you and April were here together, they would look to you for the final word,” Cas added in consolation. “They’re exploring Pack hierarchy. It’s an important developmental stage. It’s not personal.”

“Smug bastard,” Dean muttered sleepily.

Cas grinned. His husband was beautiful and trusting and sweet. He’d turned out to be an exceptional father, to no one’s surprise. And Cas found that moments like this one, sharing small moments of peace while they watched their children grow were the ones that meant the most.

Sounds of sharp rebuke from beyond the playground drew his attention. An Omega and alpha couple, people Castiel didn’t know, had stopped short close to the playground’s perimeter. The alpha was incensed, the Omega chagrined. Little heads turned to watch the confrontation as the alpha put her mate on the ground. Castiel watched his pups observe a Lupin dynamic play out in real time. Kat stepped closer and pressed her face between the bars of the play-structure, watching with wide, fascinated eyes. Alex dropped his pebbles and ambled backward several steps, putting distance between himself and the angry words of an unknown alpha. He turned his head to pinpoint his parents and seek direction. Jimmy Dean and Emma looked up briefly but then turned as one back to their sand mountain and carried on.

“Don’t go drawing their charts yet, Alpha,” Dean told Cas with his eyes closed again. “Everything is likely to change between now and Presentations.” Dean could feel Castiel drawing conclusions that weren’t ready to be drawn yet.

The alpha across the playground from the Winchesters, realizing she had an audience of pups, left off her rebuke after a few well-aimed swats to her mate’s upturned backside before hauling the man back to his feet and stalking away with him, back toward the parking lot if their change of direction meant anything. The children mostly went back to their games. One pair of very young toddlers chose to mimic the adults. They even managed to work the little boy’s pants and diaper to his knees before one of the parents sauntered across to redirect them.

Dean wormed closer until his head tucked in close below Castiel’s chin. Cas tightened his embrace. 

“How old were you when you first caught sight of your wolf, Dean?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question considering they’d discussed Dean’s Tertiary’s early onset at length already.

Dean scoffed. “I wasn’t three.” Indeed, it was too early to use their pups’ behaviors to predict the nature of the wolves they would someday house. But Cas wondered. They didn’t have enough studies on early childhood personality traits in relation to adult Tertiary traits yet. Kevin had several in the planning stages.

“If you were aware of your wolf at five years old though,” Cas pondered. “Then it probably had at least a shadowy existence at three. It could have influenced your behavior without anyone realizing it. Watch Kat, Dean. She leans in. Whenever there’s a hierarchical flare-up, she leans in. Perhaps it’s nothing. But maybe not. Maybe it’s predictive.”

“Maybe it’s confirmation bias,” Dean offered, still ensconced in his Alpha’s embrace. “If she presents as a Dominant or an alpha, either one, you’ll conclude that you called it.”

“Ah, but she’s my firstborn,” Cas pointed out. “Odds are against her being either. But watch her, Dean. Even at three, she’s barely submissive at all. I suspect we’ve got our work cut out for us to direct her upbringing. I suspect we won’t have much influence over Kathleen at all. She’s going to do exactly what she decides to do and to hell with the consequences.”

Dean chuckled. “She gets that from her brat of a Daddy.”

Cas sighed and tapped Dean’s back to sit him up. “Aaaaand, we’re flinging sand. You want this one?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Dean used Castiel’s thigh to help him stand. He set a firm, forbidding expression in place and crossed the playground swiftly to intervene before anyone wound up with a scratched cornea. A dissonant pair of wails, some tears and some snot, and a short break from playtime later, Dean let Alex cajole him into a game of tag. The game drew pups off the play structures and out into the open grass until the swing set sat abandoned and squeals of laughter echoed across the duck pond. 

Castiel sat his bench and watched. Strangers joined in, drawn by Dean’s vibrant charisma and gentle nature. If it were possible to fall endlessly and repeatedly in love with the man, Castiel was still falling. Dean made joy look effortless and inevitable. He drew people to him without lifting a finger, and every person he smiled at, no matter their age, felt accepted and appreciated and part of Dean’s world. He just had that effect. Cas watched him scoop up a child who seemed to want to play but hadn’t yet mustered up the courage. Dean caught him around the torso from a dead sprint, whisking him into the air, eliciting a squeal of delight, and tucking him under one arm like a football before dodging attackers from every direction.

Somehow, the game grew to enormous proportions in a matter of minutes, and the littlest participants could easily have been trampled or outgunned as far older pups let their adolescent wolves take the competitive bit. But Dean directed those he pegged as tops to look out for and engage with the tiniest players until rag-tag teams organized themselves around seeing that everyone had a chance to get into the melee. Cas tried to work out what the goal of the fracas was, but it looked random. It looked random until half of the runners all cheered at once and high-fived in celebration. Dean’s shy little buddy beamed as Dean ran a victory lap with the kid on his shoulders.

The impromptu game broke up. Dust drifted back to settle on the scuffled lawn. Dean, sweaty and red-faced and glowing, laughed his way back to Castiel’s bench with two of his own pups in his arms and the other two skipping happily along behind him. “Ice cream for the winners, Alpha?” he asked loudly enough to indicate he’d already promised as much to his brood.

“However did you determine winners in that chaos?” Cas asked as he lifted Emma onto his lap.

“We winned, Papa!” Jimmy bragged. “Did you see me?”

“I saw,” Cas assured his son. “You played hard. All of you did. I believe ice cream is in order.” 

Five faces lit up at that pronouncement. Alex and Kat took Castiel’s hands and heaved until he stumbled to his feet. Emma slipped to the ground and took Kat’s hand, catching her sister up in a rollicking song and skipping ahead. Alex held Cas’ hand, satisfied with a slower pace in the Alpha’s company. Jimmy found his way onto Dean’s hip, leaving Dean free to stroll beside his husband, hand in hand in the sunshine surrounded by wolves and Pack and pups and victory and pleasure.

Cas squeezed Dean’s hand.

“You’re a sap, Alpha,” Dean remarked without looking away from his daughters who were nearing distant enough to be called back.

Cas let go of Dean’s hand and popped his ass smartly before reclaiming his hold and adding, “I love you too.”

***************

The house was quiet when Cas led the way from the garage into the kitchen with small bodies zinging past his legs. At least it _had_ been quiet until he brought his crew home again, stuffed with a lunch that Michael was sure to object to and topped off with enough ice cream to make their little eyes vibrate in their heads.

“Walk in the house, please,” Castiel reminded the brood before they skittered too far away. Four sets of legs slowed to a walk. “Everyone upstairs,” he directed. “Naptime.”

“Nooooo,” Emma whined.

“No nap,” Ace agreed, backing his sister up. “We can play outside, right Daddy?” Alex turned deadly plaintive eyes on Dean, but Dean wasn’t about to fall for it. All four of them had been nearly asleep on the way home.

“Listen to your Papa, young man,” Dean told him with a pointed look over his shoulder at Castiel. “March.”

At the kitchen table, Sarah looked to be sharing a pot of tea and a chat with Kate. They broke off as the Pack bustled in. Sarah collected the tea things while Kate took up the point position in leading the pups up for their nap. Dean accompanied the throng, but Cas stayed behind in the kitchen and slipped off his shoes.

“Did you have a nice time?” Sarah asked.

“It was a lovely day,” Cas told her. “Just what we all needed. Did you get the quiet you needed to finalize your dissertation?”

“I’m so close, sir. Nearly done if you can believe it.”

“I do believe it, Sarah. You’ve worked hard, kept your focus, teased out the details you needed to make your case, and now it’s coming together. I applaud you. I hope it feels good. You deserve to.” Cas pulled two beer bottles from the short refrigerator in the butler’s pantry. He zeroed in on his connection with Dean and sent a summons tinged with a taste from the bottle he’d just opened. He smiled affectionately at the irreverent thumbs up he felt in return. Dean could slant any message with a brat’s tone. Cas couldn’t have put a finger on how he knew Dean’s thumbs up resembled a single raised finger more than anything else, but there it was.

Cas pried the top off of Dean’s bottle as well and returned to the kitchen. Sarah had a speculative look on her face as if she could hear Cas’ brief exchange with his husband but couldn’t understand the words. Cas took a swig and gloated.

“You’re in a good mood,” she observed.

“I just had the most wonderful day with my pups and my husband,” Cas replied. “Sunshine does wonders for a sour disposition.”

“You have chocolate on your collar,” she told him with a teasing tone before turning to load her ceramic tea service into the dishwasher.

“Oh.” Cas craned his neck to inspect his collar and then attacked the stain with a wet cloth. “We stopped for ice cream.”

Sarah laughed softly. “Afraid Michael will find out you stuffed his pups full of sugar?”

“They’re my pups too,” Cas defended pointlessly.

“Sure they are,” Sarah laughed.

Cas gave up on the stain and chuckled at his own absurdity. He wasn’t worried about Michael finding out. He wasn’t. Cas was Alpha after all.

Sarah watched him talk himself up one side of the issue and down the other. She shook her head and took a chair at the table. Cas joined her. 

“The dynamics in this house are never going to make any sense to me,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I keep expecting it all to click.”

Cas pursed his lips and set his gaze on his hands, wrapped around the amber bottle before him on the table. “Without a sense of smell and access to the bonds we share, you must be at such a loss to follow what comes so naturally to us. You’re not wrong that I feel a certain degree of chagrin at treating the pups to ice cream without first checking with Michael about it. I’m Alpha, Sarah, but we all agreed that he would take the lead on their health and upbringing. He cannot do that effectively if his three partners keep undercutting his choices. Ice cream is not a significant mutiny to our setup, but Michael can’t direct his energies if he must constantly keep redirecting them.”

“Surely though, the Alpha gets to enjoy his own Pack without running everything through for approval,” Sarah questioned obliquely. She tilted her head in a perfect Castiel imitation and narrowed her eyes unconsciously.

Cas chuckled. “We’ll see, I suppose,” he answered.

Dean strolled in and swept his beer bottle off the island where Cas left it. He collapsed into the chair beside his husband. “Four exhausted three-year-olds and four pups adamant that they aren’t tired at all,” he complained. “Kate, April, and Michael are all on the job. It’ll probably take an army to get those puppies to settle. Michael’s already suspicious, man. He said they look to be on a sugar high. Think we’re in for it once he confirms his suspicions. It was nice knowing you, sir.” Dean winked.

“Godspeed,” Cas agreed with a touch of the neck of his bottle to Dean’s.

“May I ask a question before you’re both beheaded, while I’ve got you here?” Sarah asked with a note of changing the subject. She adjusted in her chair and looked to be readying to take mental notes.

“Shoot,” Dean agreed with a long drink.

“It’s just that…Primate culture is shifting toward acknowledgment that humans of all ages have the right to their own bodily autonomy. We’re finally, communally, allowing even very young children to decide who touches them and how. The speculation is that as children who’ve been taught that their bodies are their own grow to adulthood, they will be far less vulnerable to the kinds of abusive manipulation that pins victims in unhealthy relationships, uncomfortable saying no when they need to protect themselves. But it seems that Lupin culture teaches children the exact opposite. Do pups not warrant governance over their own bodies?”

“No,” Cas replied simply.

“But,” Sarah fumbled. “How do you teach them to protect themselves? To set appropriate boundaries?”

“It is not a child’s responsibility to protect itself,” Cas told her. “It is the responsibility of the child’s caretakers. Even adult Lupins, those who have deferential designations, cannot claim full bodily autonomy. Our brains are wired to thrive upon hierarchy. That colors every aspect of our social lives. If you will examine your own research closely, you’ll see echoes of this running throughout your own conclusions. You just haven’t put it all together yet.”

“So, you feel it’s appropriate to force a child to accept a hug they don’t want, don’t feel comfortable with?” Sarah frowned in dismay.

Dean reached a hand across and set it on her forearm. “We don’t let just anyone have access to our pups, Sarah. And we can smell one another’s intent. We can smell our kids’ emotions. If someone’s creeping our pups out, we would know. But the critical bit you need to understand is that subordinate Lupins don’t have body autonomy. It goes further than adults just having the right to give them a bath or change their diapers. Lupins need physical touch to process their relationships, and most of those touches are directional in nature.”

“Directional?” Sarah prompted.

“Hierarchical,” Dean clarified. “Half of what we do at The Facility in Omega or Sub classes is to undo the conditioning these poor schmucks were raised with from being embedded in ape society where they learned – wrongly – that they have a right to refuse hierarchical touching. Once we clear that out of their heads, the rest falls right into place.”

Cas nodded along, agreeing with Dean’s wording, thinking how else he could clarify the point. “Primate children who learn to speak up when they don’t want to be touched gain a feel for their own boundaries and their innate power,” Cas added. “It is empowering for Primates to learn to protect themselves this way. Wolves experience the opposite. Setting boundaries based upon personal preference distances them from the Pack. It creates artificial fences between them and their families.”

“But surely not every adult they meet is trustworthy. Not every child they meet is trustworthy either,” Sarah argued.

“No, indeed,” Castiel agreed. “It is critical that children be raised under the watchful eye of adults who protect them. No one approaches my children but through one of us. It is we who decide when touch is and isn’t appropriate for our children, not the children.”

Sarah’s frown deepened. “I can think of so many cases where the situation is rife for abuse,” she said.

“So can Michael,” Dean agreed.

Cas shot him an irritated look. “The point is,” the Alpha went on. “Lupin children who are raised as submissives under a firm social strata fare better in adult relationships later in life. And they experience lower rates of adolescent and childhood depression, anxieties, learning disabilities, and social incapacities. Acquiescence to Pack touch reinforces that stability. With our Pack connections and powerful sense of smell, Lupins don’t suffer the same frailties that some Primates do that predispose them toward abuse. I’m not claiming a superior moral position for wolves over apes, Sarah. We certainly do have our frailties. But abuse of minors is exceedingly rare. We are wired to nurture and protect.”

“Oh, come on,” she shot, disbelieving. “Crime against Omegas by rogue lone-wolf alphas? Rape? Violent attacks? You don’t think those count?”

Cas shook his head. Dean downed his beer. Cas leaned in and said, “We don’t sexualize or beat our children. Violent crime against Omegas is an entirely different social construct. It arises from instinct run amok with no outlet. Lupins do not have an instinct to harm children. And children need to learn to honor the Pack hierarchy. Where ape children must be taught to trust their gut instinct because there are Primate predators out there who will harm them, and because they have an inherent social responsibility to develop independence, Lupin children must be taught the opposite – that they cannot be safe but by trusting their elders to know their own best interest and to see to it.”

“Primate predators harm Lupin children as well, Alpha,” Sarah admitted bitterly.

“Only if they are allowed access,” Cas replied. His tone turned dark, hinting at a deep disgust of child sexual predators and the danger they posed to his Pack – a danger they would be sorely pressed to find a way to act upon.

“That’s why you take them to the dog park playground?”

“Dog parks allow us more liberty from social constraints, Sarah,” Dean put in. “But any public park would be just as safe with one or more of us watching. No one’s going to approach a wolf pup whose parents are nearby. The early years of a pup’s life are all about learning trust. We have to be worthy of that trust in everything we do and everyone we allow near them. Pups can tell when they’re in perilous conditions versus when they are instructed to hug Grandma but don’t want to. Your species is right to allow children their own boundaries and their own voices. But you gotta make allowances for how we’re built different. This is why one set of laws governing both species doesn’t work. We aren’t the same as you. Deep, deep inside – way down at our core – we’re different.”

“There’s also the point that we don’t have to practice social distancing at the dog park,” Cas added with a touch of sadness.

Lupins, it turned out after rigorous studies, could neither carry nor catch Covid-19, but trying to enforce social distancing and mask mandates when authorities couldn’t tell from a distance who was Lupin and who Primate meant that public places required wolves to heed the same restrictions that apes were bound to. Raised on hierarchy, wolves made no fuss about abiding by the rules for the ease of governance it allowed city officials and retail shop owners. Better to adhere to rules as a group and set an example of compliance than risk adding to the cacophonous defiance of a Primate public who didn’t understand basic risk assessment.

But within their own Lupin confines, places like the city dog park and the ACRI Facility, the precautions weren’t useful. They turned their efforts rather to mustering supplies and coordinating medical staff to man beleaguered hospitals.

Sarah sighed. She didn’t want to talk about Coronavirus. “After they have a spat, the pups always have to hug and kiss and make up. Michael never lets them off the hook until they do.” It was an observation more than a question. “But what if they still have a grudge to hold? Doesn’t forcing them into a physical apology deny them a voice?”

Dean chuckled. “It’s hard to hold a grudge when you’re hugging someone you love,” he said. “That’s the power of Pack scent and skin-to-skin contact. Unless you’ve got real beef with someone, sometimes just a touch is all it takes to remind you who it is you’re put out with. We don’t make them hug until we’re sure most of the beef has had a chance to be heard. Everyone but Kat likes that part. Means the lecture is over and they’re out of hot water.”

“Kat hates it,” Sarah pointed out.

“Yes, well, Kathleen is the exception who proves the rule,” Castiel replied. He finished his beer. “She still benefits from the touch despite her protestations.

Dean nodded vehemently. “Yeah, and if we let Kat decide when she wants to be touched and when she doesn’t, she’d hide in her room and superglue the door closed. She’s three and already acting like an adolescent. She’s way too young to know what’s best for her. She needs Pack touch just as much as the rest of us.”

“Or more,” Cas put in.

“Or more,” Dean agreed.

“It’s a lot to think about,” Sarah concluded.

“It all fits together, beta,” Cas told her with his mentor voice engaged. “Tell you what. Think it over. Pelt me with questions after you’ve had a chance to digest it. Then write up your reflection for me, and we’ll go over it again in depth. I want you considering how body autonomy has the power to disconnect subordinates of all ages from the Pack structure. Tell me what it does for apes and how that differs from wolves.”

Sarah’s mouth fell open. “You’re giving me homework? I’m finishing my dissertation.”

“You still have to defend your dissertation,” he told her with no sympathy. “You’ll be better positioned to do that if you understand this core tenet of Lupin psychology.”

Sarah grumbled. Dean cleared his throat, drew her eyes, and gestured toward Cas with a pointed nod of his head.

“Yes, sir,” she said, heeding the hint.

“Excellent,” Cas beamed. He stood up. “Good talk. Dean, you’re with me.”

“What? What’d I do?”

“I have no idea,” Cas told him. “Let’s go find out, shall we?” He offered Dean his hand, and after a conversation about how subordinates don’t have the right to deny a Top’s touch, he had no recourse but to take it and let Cas lead him out of the kitchen.

Fred stopped them in the foyer with a pained expression. “Ah, Alpha. Good. I do regret needing to abandon the household on short notice, but I’ve become unwell rather suddenly, and I need to go home. I will keep you abreast of my condition as it becomes more certain. If you will excuse me, please.”

“Fred?” Dean took hold of the butler’s elbow and supported him. He looked pale and shaky. “Let Cas look you over. You shouldn’t be driving in this condition. What’s wrong? It’s not your heart again, is it?”

“No, alpha, I’m certain it’s something far more tedious than that. I shan’t be driving. David is on his way to fetch me. I feel sure it’s something disagreeable that I ate. Please don’t fret. I won’t be infirm long. These things tend to work themselves out.”

Cas watched the man’s carriage and his eyes. He caught the spasm of pain as it passed across his face and tightened his belly. “Go home and tell David I said to take good care of you,” Cas instructed, winning a small smile from the butler. “Have him call me in the morning, Fred. And don’t come back to work until Tuesday no matter how much better you feel. If you worsen, I’m taking you to the clinic myself. No arguments.”

“Yes, Alpha. Thank you, sir.”

Fred shuffled toward the back of the house to the staff door behind the garage with a hand on his stomach. Dean worried. “Should we send a doctor to his house anyway? It could be Covid, C.J.”

“Unlikely,” Cas replied, sounding less sure than he meant to. “He doesn’t have any of the standard symptoms. But, yes, I plan to have him looked after in the morning, and that will include a Covid test. I’ll arrange it with David. In the meantime, Fred’s own bed and a release from his duties will do him the most good right now. He’s smart enough to know if he needs a doctor’s care in the immediate term. Let’s not stifle the man.”

“Cas…”

“It’s not our decision, Dean.”

“The hell it’s not,” Dean objected. “He’s seventy-five years old. He’s too old to keep spending twelve-hour days taking care of someone else’s house. I love him as much as you do, but you know damn well he’s not ever going to retire on his own. And as long as he’s in the job, he’s never going to turn things over to anyone else. He doesn’t delegate, man. He still gets down on his knees to dust under the clock by hand – every day.”

“I’m not going to force him into retirement, Dean. That would kill him. This is his home. It’s been his home far longer than it’s been mine or yours. His work here means more to him than his own husband does. If he’s not a butler, I fear he’ll find nothing meaningful to fill the void.”

“You’re going to let him work himself to death?”

“He isn’t working himself to death,” Cas disagreed. “The work itself isn’t a hazard to him. In fact, his work is likely keeping him healthy enough to keep living even as his body begins to weaken. So, yes, I intend to hold a place in his home for him to continue to do meaningful work for as long as he wants to.”

Dean frowned, eyes stuck on the window of the back door through which Fred had disappeared. “We should at least consider coming to terms with what the household might look like without him.”

“Oh, Dean,” Cas murmured, pulling Dean’s head around at the pain in the Alpha’s voice. Cas’ face was stricken, shattered at the very thought.

“I know, C.J. I know what he means to you.”

Cas’ eyes kept their haunted expression, a vision of loss he could hardly comprehend. “He’s the father who loved me,” Cas whispered. “The one who didn’t leave. He never left.”

“Shh. Come here. I know. He’s just got the runs right now, man. He’s gonna be fine. Probably outlive all of us.”

Castiel let Dean hold him as the reality of Fred’s impending feebleness struck home. Any fool could see it coming, but Cas had been diligently shoving the worry to the back of his head, as had Fred for that matter. Relative lifespans of otherwise healthy Primate humans to Lupin ones… Well, suffice to say, Castiel could expect to outlive the old man even if they didn’t have an age difference stacking the deck. Old age, decrepit deceleration, and infirmity was the price humans pay for extending natural life beyond the point where an individual could hold its own. Castiel wasn’t naïve. It just hurt. And he wasn’t ready.

Castiel didn’t push his emotions down this time. He let them come, safe in his husband’s arms. He centered himself in the present, as he’d learned to do through years of quiet meditative mind-training. He felt it. And it hurt. And he let it follow a tortuous course through his body until the burn of grief subsided on its own, leaving him softened but steady.

Dean left a lingering kiss on his temple and a couple of bracing stiff pats between his shoulder blades. Cas pulled himself together with a deep inhale through his nose. His eyes were dry. 

“I’m all right,” he mumbled as he drew away. Cas felt wrong-footed in the awkward interim after their interruption. Dean was watching him, waiting for a signal. Castiel had seemed determined toward an outcome of his own making before they were waylaid by the family butler, but Dean didn’t know what it was. How could he know? Cas hadn’t filled him in yet. Cas stood still in the middle of the foyer with his eyes on the floor in front of him for several breaths, reframing himself. Worrying about Fred wouldn’t help anyone until they knew more about his ailment. And Cas had plans to see to.

Gathering himself and offering his headspace to his Alpha, Castiel let his eyes darken.

Dean’s eyes responded instantly in kind. Quite suddenly, Dean _did_ know.

“B…but…You…you gave me beer,” Dean stuttered in a _non-sequitur_ that Cas had no trouble following. Castiel smirked. 

“One beer now and again shouldn’t hamper us overmuch,” the Dominant replied. 

Dean took an unwitting step backward. Castiel took a step forward.

“What’s wrong, Pet? Don’t you want to play with me?”

“Right now?”

“Have you anything more pressing to do?” Castiel asked with a brow raised.

And the truth was, as Dean stood transfixed by the weight of blue eyes tinged with crimson, he didn’t. He most decidedly didn’t have anywhere on Earth better to be than right here. The simplicity of the connection between their eyes affected an instant supplication from Dean, whose instincts kicked in, flushed his body with pleasure at the thought of groveling naked on his back on the marble floor and hoisting his knees high in the air to present himself to his master. His face flushed. His fingertips tingled.

“I want to take you apart, Pet,” Castiel intoned with another step forward that Dean reacted to with a corresponding retreat, backing toward the stairway, uneasy as he warred with a desire to roll and a parallel awareness that he faced a dangerous predator preparing to pounce. Castiel’s fluid advancement married serpentine with feline, evoking the image of a dragon in stalk, even as he called forth the full predatory movements of canine grace. Dean captured his own drool with the back of his hand before it dribbled down his chin. “I want to devour you right here and right now, and I always get what I want.”

“I…uh…okay? Should I … undress?”

Castiel chuckled. The sound echoed off high ceilings, warm and rich and full of dark promise. “Here’s your instruction, Pet. Are you listening?”

“Yes, Sir.” Dean found his footing and pulled himself the fuck together. God, he loved this dance, this feeling, this connection. Time to prove he was no amateur who let nerves get the best of him, even as nerves zinged from his thumping heart to every extremity and back again. He stopped backing up, earning an appreciative half-smirk from his Sir.

“Your task is to climb the staircase. You may pause along the way briefly now and again, but your progress upward must not stall or stop altogether. Do not allow yourself distraction from your goal or you will find me most displeased.”

Dean glanced over his shoulder at the staircase. He had been up and down it thousands of times in his life, often paying it no mind whatsoever as his mind fixed upon his destination rather than his journey. It didn’t seem like a troublesome goal to set. Just climb the stairs? Seriously?

Dean bit his lip and faced Castiel again. The man was closer. “I think I understand, Sir. Is there anything else?”

“In addition,” Castiel told him, adding a provocative twinkle to his eye. “Obey my every instruction along the way.”

Dean nearly burst out laughing. The timbre of his Dominant’s voice changed between one instruction and the next, a detail no rookie would have noticed. But Dean caught it. And he knew what it meant. He grinned impishly at the challenge. Castiel was setting him up to be ground into meal between the imperatives of Castiel’s Alpha versus the commandments from his wolf. They frequently feasted off different things, needed very different things, and often enough, they chose to use Dean’s body in their tug-of-war.

It was the Alpha who set Dean the simplest of tasks: to progress from the ground floor, up ten steps, a square landing with a ninety degree pivot, and then another ten steps, to the floor above. Castiel’s wolf had no intention of making it easy. The tension between the two was where Dean suckled on the drippings of power. His body answered for him. He hastened a quick retreat, backward away from the predator before him to the foot of the stairs. Mischievously, backward, he mounted the first step. His eyes sparkled. He rolled his tongue playfully along his lower lip.

“Strip for me, Pet.” Castiel moved slowly toward him. Dean gained another step without looking round. He doffed his t-shirt in one smooth motion and dropped it over the bannister before attacking his belt buckle and backing upward to take the third step.

“No, Dean. _Strip_ for me. I want to be entertained.” Castiel reached the bottom step and halted Dean’s next backward step with an arm around his lower back. Castiel leaned in and kissed Dean’s soft belly with a wet and open mouth, dragging his tongue across from hip to hip. Dean stumbled back down one step and caught himself on his husband’s shoulders.

He let his head fall backward at the sensation of wet heat at his navel. He closed his eyes and squeezed a fist into Castiel’s hair, holding him in place. The Dom chuckled again. Cas let him go, easing Dean’s hand from his shoulder to the railing to offer him support in case he was dizzy, and he stood up straight.

“Strip for me, Pet,” Castiel whispered.

Dean never presumed to be a dancer but showing off was a natural brat by-product. He held Castiel’s eyes with an intimacy that bordered on obscene, and he swayed his hips invitingly. Turning his back on the man, Dean stepped up. First one foot, then incorporating it into his striptease, he brought up the other. His hands roamed seductively over his hipbones as he rolled denim down on both sides, granting no more than a peek at the sharp bones underneath. Castiel loved Dean’s hips. This, he knew. Gyrating to a beat in his head, Dean flattened his back over the stairs and widened his stance, presenting his clothed ass for his master’s appreciation.

Castiel responded with a growl and a sharp swat, joining Dean at last on the staircase. “I said strip, Dean, not tease.” Dean smirked over his shoulder.

“Yessir.” But he moved no faster at relinquishing his pants, earning several more stinging spanks and a threat to have his blue jeans ripped unceremoniously from his body if he didn’t get on with it. Dean was on stair number five when he eased his feet out of his jeans and tossed them over Castiel’s shoulder. Whether fortunate or not he couldn’t have said, but the jeans were, in fact, his final article of clothing as well as his only entry in the strip tease. He’d dropped shoes off by the garage door upon their return home. Socks ended up in the hamper in the nursery when he ushered his troops up for a nap. And underwear, well, it’s hot out. Sometimes things gotta breathe.

They both hesitated for a moment, watching for a hint of what the other had planned, and then Dean turned and bolted toward the landing. Castiel tackled him flat and dragged him back to the fourth step. The Dominant straddled Dean’s hips, planting a knee on either side, applying teeth to the back of Dean’s neck and a vice grip to his waist. Dean grunted as he worked his forearms flat to the step at his shoulders and hauled himself upward. Castiel bit down, and Dean whined. The Sub craned his neck far to one side, offering his carotid to his superior without weakening the pull of his arms. Slowly, even with the grip to the back of his neck, Dean eased himself upward to where he could plant a knee on the stair and lift his torso – and his attacker with it – off the step. He grimaced with the effort.

“Good boy,” the Alpha whispered in his ear, at complete odds with the efforts Castiel’s wolf put into keeping him put. The great wolf would not countermand Dean’s instruction to climb the stairs, but he had no intention of allowing him to succeed either. Cas had set him squarely between the two impossible designations and made him fight to placate them both. For a brat as entrenched as Dean, borne in a Submissive as desperate to please, it was a delicious challenge. And Castiel’s wolf was a cheater. If he could, he would seduce Dean to abandon his upward trek and give himself over to the pleasure the great beast offered him.

Castiel kissed Dean’s shoulder blades and down his back until he was forced to sit up upon Dean’s backside and take fistfuls of his hair to prevent him worming his way up any further. The balls of Dean’s feet dug into the carpeted step near the ground floor and pushed, straining tendons in his calves that Cas would have appreciated could he see them. They reached a stalemate of sorts. Dean couldn’t wriggle free on his belly, and Cas couldn’t devour his prey. Carpet burns turned Dean’s chest, belly, and knees pink. They both panted for a moment, locked in tension, each straining against the force of the other, equilibrium found and vibrating.

“Roll over,” Castiel commanded, releasing his hold and tipping up on one knee to let Dean go. “Roll over on your back.”

Dean licked the corner of his mouth, uncertain of trusting the relative freedom. But he rolled, planting his ass on the fourth step. He’d made no progress at all, and his knees and belly were irritated from the dragging. He looked up into blue eyes flecked with red. Castiel’s head was backlit from the arched windows to either side of the front door, casting a golden halo around his angelic features, and Dean melted before him. He lay back, uncomfortable on the uneven surface below him, and spread his feet wide. His arms went out to either side, bent at the elbow to leave his hands out beside his head, submissive. Nonthreatening.

Castiel purred and fitted himself back into place straddling Dean’s legs. He kissed Dean’s throat. Kissed. Nipped. Licked. Down his chest, suckling aggressively on Dean’s nipples one by one. Dean’s left hand closed silently around the squared spindle of the wooden railing beside him. He moaned in unfeigned delicious erotic sensation at the pain/pleasure Cas’ lips and teeth wrought upon his nipples. But even as he reveled in sensation, he eased a foot into place on the step below him and slowly, with hand and foot, he slid his butt up to the next step. Castiel let Dean’s body slide upward, tugging the nipple from between his teeth in a stinging pull and presenting him with ribs instead – ribs heaving with exertion and expectation. Cas bit down on the sensitive flesh of Dean’s side, eliciting a yowl and rocketing Dean’s flattened body up into a V for self-protection. 

Cas sat up and tssked at his Sub. He soothed the spot with his thumb and cast an eye to Dean’s hold of the staircase spindle, drawing another sharp tssk.

Dean’s chest heaved. He released the spindle and planted his hands by his hips. Holding Castiel’s eyes intently, he pressed up and slid his ass one more step up, daring the wolf to respond, turning the tables on his Top and making Castiel’s Alpha contend directly with his own wolf instead of using Dean as a proxy. Castiel growled deep in his throat. His upper lip pulled back from his teeth. Dean held his Top’s eye and his own breath and scooted his butt back into the step, claiming it.

Lust fairly poured off of Castiel, leaving pink circles high on his cheeks and more black pupil to his eye than either blue or red in his irises. His eyes raked the length of Dean’s body, taut as a bowstring, aroused and sweating. Castiel closed his fist around Dean’s erection and stroked firmly. Dean’s breath caught and his eyes closed. A wrinkle formed between them. His hips thrust forward, losing him his balance for a moment, but he caught himself before he lost a step. Castiel fisted Dean’s cock for a handful of strokes, spreading the silky precome over the head with his thumb.

Dean licked his lips again, a tell he still wasn’t aware broadcast that his brat was about to make a move, and he lifted his right leg high into the air, crooked it around Castiel’s head and drew the man’s face toward his crotch in what couldn’t be perceived as anything but insolent. Castiel opened his mouth and engulfed Dean’s dick. Dean sprawled out on his back and cried out. Cas grasped Dean’s flanks and heaved forward, driving Dean’s hips toward his face, thrusting Dean’s cock down his throat. Dean clutched the stairway beneath him, holding on as best he could as Cas swallowed him.

He didn’t want to have to climb, but an instruction from his Alpha was commandment. He wanted to stay and revel. He wanted to pass out from the pleasure and wake up spooning in a warm, clean bed with the man who smelled like _everything_ real and whole and righteous. 

Castiel read his mind and growled menacingly without releasing his hold. And lemme tell you, a full-throated growl when that throat surrounds your sensitive bits… Dean set all of his concentration to not coming right then and there. It wasn’t easy. Castiel redoubled his efforts, adding a massaging hand to Dean’s balls that froze the Sub’s brain momentarily.

But then he swallowed his regret, took advantage of Castiel’s lax hold and turned over to scuttle up to the landing on his hands and knees. Castiel caught his foot and heaved backward, but Dean managed to take hold of the main post in the inside corner of the landing, and he held on. Castiel spanked Dean’s unprotected ass hard in a flurry of strikes. Dean held onto the post with both arms twisted around the wood and his teeth gritting in pain.

After twenty or forty strikes, Castiel gave in to his lust. Dean’s eyes shot wide as he felt a hot, wet tongue plunge into his entrance with no warning. Castiel’s palms kneaded the stinging skin of his ass as he licked, nibbled, and thrust into Dean’s hole. 

“Ahhh,” Dean grunted, tilting his hips to offer better access.

“’Scuse me, fellas,” Monica said politely as she picked her way down the steps around their sprawling limbs with a laundry basket in her hands. Castiel ignored her. Dean couldn’t really have moved anyway, not without giving up his progress. At the foot of the stairs, she collected Dean’s jeans and shirt, adding them to her basket without slowing. Dean’s vision blurred as he gazed around the post he’d snugged his chest up to while his husband ate him out in full view of the front door.

And Castiel was feral back there. Dean moaned in hedonistic abandon. Precome dripped from the tip of his dick. He had no idea how to move from this spot, or even if there was any reason to. Cas could make him come without touching his penis. He knew the exact strokes that lit Dean up from the base and sent him shooting off like a bottle rocket, and Cas could feel what every touch did to Dean.

Dean blew his breath out in long deep huffs, gathering his motivation around him, reminding himself that a trained Submissive does not lose the instruction he’s charged with just because the tongue in his ass feels incredible.

Castiel’s wolf cheats, after all.

The landing was a wide square space, grandiose with its etched honey-oak paneling and deep plush green carpet. It might prove the toughest span to cross on his way to the top, but if he could cling to the corner post as he made the turn, he’d have a far better chance of not stalling out on the flat landing that offered precious few handholds.

Castiel flattened his tongue and dragged it up the length of Dean’s taint and over his hole. Dean whined a humiliatingly high-pitched wail and buried his face in his arms. He was near the jump-point of the mental countdown to his next break for the top when Castiel grunted and drove his arms beneath Dean’s thighs, lifting his lower half up into the air with his face still buried in Dean’s ass. Castiel stood up, inverting Dean and eliciting a squawk of surprise. Dean’s face turned bright red. He clung to his post even tighter as Castiel manhandled him to his own satisfaction.

Dean’s cock found friction against Castiel’s still-clothed chest, and the tactile sensation was nearly too much. He let go of the post and pressed himself up on his hands, shoving his ass into Castiel’s face and making the Alpha support his weight. Dean growled in effort and intense lust. Castiel cackled into his flesh, delighted to have torqued Dean beyond his self-control.

He spent an eternity working Dean’s hole over with tongue and teeth and lips, one foot braced a step or two down for stability. Dean hand-walked backward to win himself position and find better friction for his dick. All attempts to wiggle free or maneuver upward were abandoned.

Without warning, Castiel stopped licking and laid Dean out on the landing on his side. Two assertive strides up the steps brought the Alpha to the landing himself. He scooped Dean into his arms without breaking stride, turned him upright, still advancing across the landing, and slammed his back into the oak paneling perpendicular to the first rise of steps. Dean grunted and clenched his eyes closed, losing his breath for a moment. Castiel held him fully aloft with his arms beneath Dean’s thighs, leaning him into the wall for support. He attacked Dean’s lips hungrily, and Dean mewled back, offering up everything his Sir might demand from him.

Castiel hoisted Dean’s left thigh onto his shoulder and used his own freed right hand to attack his belt buckle and the button and zipper of his pants. Dean clutched Castiel’s left shoulder, haphazard in balance, but stable against the wall. Dean’s left hand pressed hard against the paneling. The kissing, if it could be called kissing, continued through the fumbling of clothes and grips. Both men lost themselves in the urgency of their wolves and the connection inside their bond. Castiel made a high, desperate, entreating sound in his throat, ravenous and frantic. Dean echoed him unconsciously.

Cas shoved his pants and boxer briefs to mid-thigh and slid Dean down his arms until their groins lined up, uncurling the man as he went. Thighs out wide, Dean watched breathless as Castiel maneuvered him perfectly, letting gravity do the work with perfect aim. Dean’s ass enveloped Castiel’s cock, sliding to the base where Castiel’s knot provided a stop to the pull of gravity. Both men stared down at the connection, riveted, panting, sweating, trembling.

“Cas,” Dean pleaded, urgency in his voice.

“Shh. You’re all right, Pet. You’re my good boy.”

Dean closed his eyes and shook his head frantically. 

“Hey, hey, love, look at me.” Cas tempered his voice to tug at the inner walls of Dean’s defenses, tremulous now in the thick of being undone. “Dean, open your eyes.”

Dean’s breath hitched. His eyes snapped open.

“Calm down,” Castiel instructed, eyes very, very blue, adamant. Solid.

“I…” Dean trembled and frowned, but he matched Castiel’s slowing pace.

“Good boy. So good. Watch my eyes, Pet. Trust me.”

Dean nodded. He wiped his sweaty palm on his own thigh and then retook hold of Castiel’s shoulder. Wordlessly, slowly, Castiel drew back his hips, sliding his cock outward, and then snapped them forward again with power that slammed Dean’s body into the wall. Dean’s eyes flew wide. He moaned, gripping bruises in his Dom’s shoulder. Cas adjusted his hold, letting gravity do the work again until he held Dean braced against the wall doubled up with the Alpha’s hands gripping the back of Dean’s knees held wide. It would have been a humiliating position for most alphas, but Dean melted into the sturdiness of Castiel’s eyes, let his legs go lax so his Dominant could spread him open as he saw fit.

“Hands around my neck, Pet,” Castiel instructed. Dean laced his fingers around his husband’s neck like a Freshman at the school dance. A nod between them. And Castiel let his wolf go. He set his feet and thrust up hard and bestial, bracing Dean’s slick body as it slid across the wall in his own sweat. Dean’s head thumped against the wood, not hard enough to hurt but enough to keep him from thinking anything but this very moment. Castiel’s hips flew. The sound of thumping, slapping, squeaking skin as it slipped in its own sweat against the woodgrain paneling, and grunting breaths, echoed obscenely through the hall, down the myriad directional passageways, sending a message of ownership to every corner of the house.

Veins stood out along Castiel’s throat. He grimaced. Sweat dripped from the tip of his long, straight, noble nose. He was predator and nobleman and Alpha and beast all in one. He shoved upward with his hips and heaved down with his hands wrapped around Dean’s outer thighs to impale his husband on his knot, shouting hoarsely, face to the ceiling.

Dean tucked his chin and moaned so loudly, it sparked an echo of its own, and he came hard into the crook of his thighs. Castiel pressed in impossibly close with his tailbone tucked under and his shoulders rounded. He held Dean aloft more with his chest and hips than with his arms. Dean panted, folded tightly in the miniscule space between Castiel’s body and the unforgiving wall. Which of the two was more implacable, he couldn’t have said. Cas rolled his hips luxuriously, enjoying everything he could sense and feel and express. 

God bless a flexible alpha body.

“Not sure I’m gonna make it all the way up the stairs, Alpha,” Dean confessed sleepily.

Cas chuckled. He rolled his hips again. He had his knot locked inside his Sub’s body, but he hadn’t come yet. Not yet. He was floating blissfully in that rapturous balance before the imperative of need took him over and made the decisions for him, and he was reveling in it. He let the balance point slide away from urgency.

“You’re sumthin’ else, you know that, sir?”

“I’m going to set you down. Hold onto me.”

“Yeah, okay. I’m good.”

“Yes. You are.” Cas lowered an arm and allowed Dean’s leg to slide off, easing it to the ground with support behind his thigh before following with the other. Standing together fully knotted was painful. Dean hissed and lifted his right knee up to wrap a leg around Castiel’s waist, taking the pressure off somewhat.

Cas worked his pants upward, tucking the waistband under Dean’s calf to keep him from losing them altogether. He nodded and tapped the outside of Dean’s left leg, signaling a readiness to catch his weight. Dean pressed his back into the wall and jumped that leg up as well. Cas caught him easily under his ass, took a moment to brace him against the wall and fix the other side of his waistband securely, and then staggered slightly as he eased him off the paneled wall and carried him up the remaining flight of stairs.

“S’cheating,” said Dean, leaning down for a kiss to swollen lips.

“In no way is this cheating,” Castiel chided him. “I gave you every opportunity to fulfill the instruction, and you allowed yourself to become distracted.” Cas carried him down the hall to the master suite and folded over him on the bed, minding the connection of their bodies and renewing the kiss. Dean’s ankles crossed and locked behind Castiel’s back. At ease with a bed beneath them and gravity no longer their enemy, Cas picked up where he left off, rolling his hips and grinding hard into the tug of Dean’s tight musculature until he’d worked himself back up to the brink. He pulled his lips away with a smacking sound, eyes intent, and he came with a masculine moan and a frown of concentration. His eyes flashed crimson for a brief moment, lit from within at the moment of climax before fading back to serene blue.

“I failed, then?” Dean clarified once Cas seemed to have rejoined the party. “You gonna punish me?”

“What do you think?” Castiel asked severely.

“I tried my best, sir. Nearly tore down the bannister.”

Cas scoffed. “Legs up,” he said.

Dean stalled a moment, biting his lip, watching Castiel’s eyes. Cas swatted his thigh. 

“Up!”

Dean uncrossed his ankles and hoisted his legs up, freeing his Alpha to stand upright. Their connected bodies situated at the edge of the bed offered them a little wiggle room to pivot. Cas raised his left forearm to hold Dean’s legs behind the knees, leaning them a little to his left to free a bit of real estate along Dean’s ass and left thigh. With a powerful grunt, Cas slapped Dean’s thigh with his right hand. A hot red handprint sprang to life, creating a nicely centered target. Dean hollered in pain, flailing his feet and nearly kicking Cas in the face.

“Control yourself, Submissive! Do that again, and I’ll keep spanking until we untie.”

Dean groaned, but he reached up and gathered his errant legs up in his arms, tucking into a tight ball with his arms fastened around his shins. Cas massaged the spare section of cock behind his knot that was pulled taut and growing sore. That would have to be endured. He had a Submissive to correct. Cas braced his left hand against Dean’s opposite thigh, helping to hold him in place, and he worked the awkward angle to turn his butt and thigh bright red. Dean squeezed his eyes closed, sniffling hard every few minutes. Castiel let his wolf feast, denying him nothing, relishing the pain on his husband’s face. Dean’s foot slipped as his muscles tightened and spasmed, and he kicked Castiel square in the chest by accident.

A look of horror crossed Dean’s face. He scrambled back into position, rocking slightly in self-admonition. Castiel could practically hear the man castigating himself. He growled at Dean, rolled him to lean the opposite way, and started turning his right side equally red and burning.

“Stop that this minute,” Cas ordered, taking a breather as Dean continued his internal reprimand. “You don’t punish you, Pet. I do. Did you kick me on purpose?”

“No, no, no, I swear, itwasanaccident!”

“Of course, it was. So, let me take care of it. Just breathe, Pet. You’re doing so well for me.”

Castiel pulled his unbuckled belt from his beltloops with a telltale “zzzpp!” that made Dean wince. A sob broke from his throat. He curled tighter into his ball.

“Before I continue, Dean,” Cas posed conversationally. “Is there anything you need to come clean about? Any personal confessions we need to take care of?”

“No, Sir!”

“Are you sure? Nothing? We may as well clear the air while we’re at it.” Cas coiled the belt around his fist until only a short strap hung free.

Dean sobbed but shook his head.

“That’s a first, I believe, my love. Michael is a very good influence on you. Almost a pity, isn’t it? I do so want to bruise you up nice and dark.”

Dean didn’t speak, but he pulled his knee in tighter, opening up the curve of his backside. And he nodded with a sniffle.

“I love you enormously, Dean Michael Winchester,” Cas told him without a trace of his Dominant wolf or his domineering Alpha.

Dean set his jaw and nodded again.

Castiel splayed his hand across Dean’s shin, put a bit of pressure in to hold him, and whipped the strap back. Applying a strapping while knotted to the strappee was no easy feat. But Castiel had practiced the technique, and he had the tuck of his elbow mastered. The darkening welts across Dean’s thigh, hip, and butt sent a visceral pleasure coursing through, heating his blood, thickening his cock. But the _pièce de resistance_ was the clenching of Dean’s asshole around Castiel’s knot as he worked through the pain. Forget psychological or metaphysical pleasure; this was corporeal, physical ecstasy, and Castiel came hard even as his strap continued to fly.

His vision whited out, halting his strikes, and when he came back to himself, Dean lay staring up at his face in astonishment with a fresh spritz of come smeared on his belly and inner thighs.

Cas laughed effacingly.

Dean reached for him with childlike grabby hands, and Cas tossed the strap onto the far side of the bed before leaning down over his husband to help maneuver them both up onto the bed without tugging too much on their tie.

“I needed that, Alpha,” Dean murmured into his ear. “You always know what I need before I do.”

“Don’t go giving me too much credit,” Cas demurred. “I did it for myself. You and I just happen to be nearly synced when it comes to need. Was it acceptable?”

Dean snorted and stretched upward and behind himself for a couple of tissues. “That was awesome, Sir. I love a good chase. That had everything I like about a chase without having to go outside in the sweltering heat.”

“Mmm. Yes, you have always responded beautifully to any opportunity to compete.”

“Was there a chance I was gonna make it up the stairs?” Dean asked after he scrubbed his belly and thighs mostly clean with the tissues. He tossed them toward Cas’ belt.

Cas licked his lips and made a self-important face before admitting, “If you had turned and made a break for it straightaway, I probably wouldn’t have caught you before you reached the top.”

“Hm. Good to know for next time.” Dean grinned at him and then lifted his left leg and rubbed behind it. Cas smacked his hand away before applying three fat swats to the spot Dean was rubbing. Dean giggled, rolling the pair of them over. He kissed Castiel soundly. Then he planted his hands and raised up to look down at the smug man beneath him.

“All set for your Rut? Anything you need me to take care of?”

“Yes,” Cas answered, turning slightly troubled. “I’ll talk you through the handover tomorrow night. But, Dean, more than worrying about my cycle, I’m beginning to feel that we’re losing ground on our mission. We need to fast-track our initiatives or we’re not going to be ready for me to hand over the Directorship, not to Miles or anyone. We’re not making the progress we need to have made by now. I only have two more years.”

Dean let his disbelief that the Alpha wanted to talk strategy while still sweaty and tied show on his face. But he humored the man. “Two more years before you transition to the Foundational board, Cas. You’re not abandoning us. We can do a lot in two years. And I’m telling you, it’s all in motion. You don’t see the difference yet, but everything is picking up steam. When shit starts clicking, it’s going to go fast. You’ll see. Trust me. We’re right where we’re supposed to be.” Dean stole another kiss. Cas’ hand was warm on his back. He crooked a half smile down at his Alpha, earning a half-smile back.

“We have something else of importance to discuss, Dean,” Cas told him. 

Was that trepidation on his face?

Dean scoffed, breaking into a laugh. There it was. This was the one Dean had been waiting for, the reason Castiel James had needed a power-exchange spectacular in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday in the first place. “Look, if you’ve been trying to figure out how to break the news that you and April are all set to water the lawn again, save your breath. You both stink with fertility. She’s probably pregnant already.”

Cas registered shock. Or, surprise, at least. He lifted up onto an elbow, holding Dean steady with his other hand. “I didn’t mean to keep it from you,” he said earnestly. “The truth is, she and I haven’t even discussed it out loud ourselves yet. We both just…know. We’re both feeling it. We’re in sync with feeling it’s time. I should have brought it up formally with all four of us, but time got away from me. Dean, if you or Michael aren’t ready, we’ll postpone everything. But the pups are three now. Having another one or three in seven months puts them at an age difference of four years. It’s a good separation. And April’s coming to another building phase of her career where most of her work can be done at home or in the studio.”

Dean smiled softly and kissed the tip of Castiel’s nose. “I’m never going to feel anything but excitement about adding another pup to our Pack, baby. Michael isn’t ready to carry another one. He may never want that again. Alex took a lot out of him, emotionally. He’s a bit spooked. But April carried like a champ, and she bounced right back. If she’s ready, then you won’t hear any griping outta me.”

“Dean, I… well, I worry about controlling myself in there. I don’t think another quadruplet pregnancy is a good idea. I can’t bear to lose another due to…overdoing it. But I’m not sure I can hold back.”

Dean huffed a gentle laugh. He turned it into a grimace when the Alpha’s cock slipped free. “Euwrch!” he protested, untangling himself and clambering off the bed, ingloriously swiping himself clean with handfuls of tissues. “How the pregnancy evolves and whether it sticks or not, man, it sucks, but it’s mostly out of our hands. We didn’t lose Dylan because you overdid anything. Omegas have quadruplets often enough to know it’s a feasible thing. And Omegas miscarry single pregnancies too. It wasn’t you, Castiel. It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do. He just wasn’t viable. For whatever reason. And that hurts. But you can’t let it color what happens right now.”

Cas sighed and sat up. He crossed his legs in front of him. “I will feel better if we only fertilize one womb this time.” It was an admission, and Cas didn’t like making it. He peeked up at Dean standing above him.

“Then you do that,” Dean told him without judgment. “Michael and I, we’re here with you both, every step of the way.”

“Thank you, Dean.”

“Come on, Alpha. Get up and let’s shower. You made a fucking mess.”

***************

Emma and Jimmy went right to sleep, but Kat pouted in defiance, and Alex whined sadly, clinging to April’s torso while she rocked him and hummed a soft melody. 

“I’ll take her,” Michael whispered to Kate, easing a cranky Kathleen out of her arms. “Go on. We’ll get them napping and then drop the monitor off to you when they’re down.” Kate nodded docilely and caressed Kat’s curls before closing the door softly behind her. “I can’t believe they juiced them up on this much sugar and then dumped them on us to calm down.” But the griping didn’t match his cuddling and soft hands. No one was fooled by his irritated grumbling. Michael loved everything about being a mother.

Michael held Kat up against his shoulder, urging her to lay her head against him with a gentle hand at the back of her head. She settled her head but kicked rhythmically with her feet. Michael shifted her so that her feet didn’t strike any of his delicate places. He paced the length of the room, enjoying the simple loveliness of holding his daughter like this, of feeling her trust and offering her his strength to rest against.

“They’re getting so big,” April observed softly, noting how far down Michael’s body Kat’s legs dangled. “I miss having babies in the house. Don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Michael replied, pausing to watch Portia bark at a squirrel halfway up the trunk of the live oak. “They’re still little enough to be a handful,” he offered.

“I suppose. But it’s not the same.”

Kat whined and scrubbed her face into Michael’s collarbone before turning her head to face his throat and settling down again. He rocked her side to side. “Not the same as having tiny fists curl around your finger while they nurse,” he agreed. He looked down at Kat’s face. She wasn’t kicking now but every now and again, but her eyes were still open. “Are you leading up to something, Pete?”

She smiled and averted her eyes. She shifted Ace to sit sideways on her lap and lie back into her arm, still rocking smoothly. “I can feel it again,” she admitted. “I want more. I’m ready.”

Michael nodded, half to himself as if that were the announcement that made all the pieces fall into place.

“What about you?” she asked. “Don’t you feel pulled to do it again?”

Michael set off slowly to cross the room once more. Across and back before he answered. “I don’t, no. I think one was enough for me. At least for a while.”

“Oh.” 

Michael looked up at the patent disappointment in her voice. “Pete, what I feel about having pups shouldn’t have any bearing on you. You know that, right? I can’t father your children, and I’m not in a place to try for more of my own. But you have to do what’s right for you. If you want more pups, and now’s the time, then don’t let me stand in your way.”

April drifted away with a dreamy look in her eye, still rocking before adding, “You know alpha Maureen? She Mated an Omega man. Years ago, this was, and he died a long time ago. They didn’t have any pups.”

Michael continued to stroll without answering. Maureen wasn’t his favorite babysitter. He had an inkling where this was going.

“She told me that they talked about trying to get each other pregnant at the same time. Wouldn’t that have been romantic? Twins, carried separately, one for each mother. Both of them a mother and a father at the same time.”

Michael suppressed his dismissive scoff. April felt it anyway.

She blurted, “Okay, maybe it’s not that romantic. But it’s sweet anyway. She didn’t get that though. He died.”

Michael laid Kat carefully in her tiny bed, covering her with a soft blanket. She whimpered once and then fell still. “Out with it, Pete.”

She looked up at him as he loomed over her with one arm braced on the wall by her chair. “If you aren’t ready for another one quite yet,” she explained. “I can wait six months or so. I want this with you. I want to share something with you that’s ours and no one else’s. Being pregnant together is a way to bond that the alphas can’t share.”

Michael squatted down beside her. “Baby, what we have together is already ours and no one else’s. You mean the world to me. And I’m not surprised you’re ready for another litter.” Michael stroked Ace’s dark hair, struck as always by the boy’s resemblance to his father. “But I’m not. Don’t wait for me when I may never get there. I’m not thinking along those lines. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us if we set up an expectation that hurts us both. I know you’ve got those urges crawling around in your gut. Pete, I can feel it. You have a cycle coming up. What has Cas said about it?”

“We haven’t discussed it.”

Michael blinked at her and then stood up, looking down. “At all?”

“Not yet.”

“God, the two of you,” Michael exclaimed.

“Shh.”

“Are you telling me you’re going into a H/R cycle fully fertile and you haven’t had one conversation with your mate, who is also, I hope you’ve noticed, fully fertile?”

“We don’t have to talk about it, Michael,” she clarified. “We don’t really have to talk about much at all. I can feel what he’s feeling and what he thinks about it, and he can sense me the same way. We’re of the same mind on this. He’s ready too. What’s there to say?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe, ‘Hey, April, it seems like you’re thinking this round might be a good one to try for another pup or six? Am I reading that right?’”

It was April’s turn to scoff. She reached for Michael’s hand. He helped her to her feet. She put Alex in bed next to Kat and drew his own blanket up over him. He curled into his sister. She threw an arm across him and snuggled in.

“We will put it all out there before we cycle,” April told him as she watched her pups sleep. “We’re not leaving anything to chance. You’ve met the man, right? You think he’s going to knock me up without asking twelve times if I’m sure? But it’s window dressing. We don’t really need it.”

Michael came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her belly, lacing his fingers with hers and setting his chin upon her shoulder so they could pup-watch together. “I’m worried for you,” he admitted.

She rested her temple against his. “Life is risky,” she told him. “But we still have to live it.”

“Mm,” he agreed. The heel of his hand massaged her lower belly gently. “And you look amazing pregnant with a million puppies.”

She grinned. “On the bright side,” she stated. “If you’re _not_ pregnant or recuperating while I’m on the nest, I’ll have both of you free to help me through the horniness of the second trimester. Poor Cas barely lived last time. And you were on bed rest.”

“Don’t give me that,” he replied. “I remember your second trimester. It wasn’t a happy time. What do you think has me so worried?”

“Ahh!” She blew him off and wormed out of his arms. She straightened the room a little, tossing clothes in the hamper and toys in the toy chest.

“Pete, please. Just hear me out. Maybe don’t put yourself through the full gamut this time. I know it’s an Alpha’s birthright to plug you up until you pop, but his breeding kink puts you in danger. If you ask him to show some restraint, I know he’ll do it, even if it hurts. He’ll give you anything, but he shouldn’t expect you to give him your health, your life.”

April pressed her lips tightly together and then sighed. “All right, Michael. We can talk to him together if you want. You’re a part of my life and a co-parent too. You get to have your say. And if you’re that worried, he needs to know about it anyway.”

Michael smiled stiffly. He collected the monitor from its dock on the nursery dresser and moved to switch it on, but April caught his hand. He looked round at her and found her standing close enough to kiss. So, he did. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek into his chest where she could hear his heart beating stoutly.

“Marry me, Michael?”

He pulled back, holding her at arms’ length and staring into her face, stunned.

“What?”

“Is that shocking?” she asked, looking terribly uncertain. “I love you. We’re raising pups together. Your mate is one of the best friends I’ve ever had. My mate is the mentor you craved your whole adolescence. We’re never going to have to worry about growing apart. We’re perfect for each other. How could it be so awful to think about marriage?”

“It’s not _awful,_ Pete. But why? What’s wrong with things the way they are? What does putting a ring on your finger prove? I thought we both agreed there was no point to … that.” Michael put a few more steps of distance between them. He scowled and slammed his Mating-bonds closed when he felt his mate’s inconvenient sensations overriding his own need to focus. April’s flushed cheeks told him she was feeling much the same.

She turned away. She leaned over Idgie and tucked her blanket in a little more snugly. She was hurt, and Michael hated himself just a little, but he couldn’t bring himself to take his reaction back.

“I love you, Peter Pan,” he whispered, drawing her back in close to him, turning her to face him. “You don’t need a ring and piece of paper to know that I’m not ever going to leave you. Is this about the pups? Do you think that if we marry Castiel might let you have mine?”

“It’s not about pups,” she told him with her spine in place. “It’s about wanting to be yours. Really yours. It’s about wanting to share your name between the two of us and not just through our mates. Do you know that the media has no choice but to keep calling you my ‘boyfriend’?” She put irritable finger quotes around the word, leaving Michael frowning with no good answer. “And I’m your girlfriend. In fifty years, I’ll still just be your girlfriend, only, they’ll add the word ‘longtime’ in front. Michael, I don’t want to be your longtime girlfriend. Don’t you get it?”

Michael regrouped and shushed her. He collected the monitor, took April by the hand, and led her into the hallway. Kate poked her head out of her adjoining room. Michael flipped the monitor on, toyed with the volume a bit, and handed it off with a curt nod which Kate didn’t seem ruffled by. He drew April down the hall, pulling up short when the tops of their mates’ heads came into view on the stairway landing, accompanied by lustful moans. Cas was putting Dean’s flexibility to the test, apparently. Michael huffed and changed direction, heading toward the private study instead and closing the door. He was fairly certain their mates hadn’t even noticed their presence. Or departure for that matter.

“We said we didn’t need to get married,” Michael turned on her in adamance. “We said it was just another layer of rules and restrictions that we didn’t need. I don’t give a fuck what the media has to say about us, and that was the whole point! Cas and Dean got to decide for themselves how they wanted to define their relationship, and they said to hell with what anyone else thought was right. Even you. Even me! They didn’t ask anyone but each other. Don’t you get it? If we follow their footsteps, we’re just mimicking what was right for them, not finding a way of our own. No one thinks we’re for real, Pete. No one thinks Omegas can hold a relationship together – not a real one.”

“Wait. Do you care what people think, or don’t you?” April challenged. “Do you care what I think?” she asked on top of his sour expression.

“Don’t be stupid. And fuck off with your manipulative games. You know I care what you think. Pete, if I ever get married, it’ll be to you and no one else. And if I never marry, it’ll still be you and no one else.”

“So, that’s a no, then,” she said with her eyes bright and her chin high.

“Tell me why,” he demanded again. “Not about wanting a socially acceptable moniker for the media to use. Tell me what a ring changes. What do you need from me that you’re not getting now?”

She looked away, but he saw the tear break free and cascade down the cheek she hid from him. Michael put a hand on her chin and eased her face back around. He collected her tear with his thumb, drying its track and warming the coolness of her skin with his touch. “Talk to me, Pete.”

“I’m not afraid of layers of rules, Michael. That was your issue, not mine. Just because our mates beat us to it doesn’t mean that choice is locked forever. Growing up, I believed that same-Secondary marriages for alphas or Omegas were doomed to failure because I was raised to believe that. But it’s not true. Our mates are proving that to the whole world, and you and me, we’re learning it right alongside everyone else. I never wanted to be an alpha, Michael. I don’t want the responsibility. But I longed to be a beta if for no other reason than being allowed a partner who’s like me, not my polar opposite. I love Cas. But I love you too. I love you no less than him. I get to share parenthood with him, a Mating-bond, a scar on my neck that turns me into jelly when he just touches it. With you, I have…what? Sex? We get to share baby-puke experiences? What is there besides what we feel to set us apart from any two Omegas in any pack anywhere?”

“But, Pete, what we feel is everything,” Michael jumped in. “It’s the _only_ thing that’s real.”

“It’s not the same as what Dean and Cas have, and you know it,” she told him tiredly. “It’s not the same. But if that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do. Cas said we make important decisions about family growth by consensus in this Pack, and any no vote defaults to no action. So, unless we both want it, then we won’t go there.”

“Cas is full of shit about consensus,” Michael put in. “He always gets what he wants. One way or another. And I didn’t notice him calling for consensus about trying for another pregnancy next week when you two cycle.” He regarded her in silence for a few moments, working through the lines of inevitability from this point, and it made him angry to realize they all led to the same end, ultimately. She wouldn’t be happy without his ring and his name (whatever that meant), and a license filed with the state of Kansas contractually binding them as one flesh. As if any Omega needed yet another leash.

But she wouldn’t be happy until she fit him into her fantasy domestic life. God and the Universe help him, Michael needed her to be happy. It was that image of perfect domesticity that stuck in his throat and tried to claw its way out. He couldn’t be that man. He wasn’t husband material. Not in any way he’d ever understood the word. Michael’s heartrate kicked up when he tried to envision it. Him, a husband. Someone’s husband. Pete’s husband.

He scrubbed a hand across his eyes and tried again. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he admitted. “If loving you and standing beside you through whatever comes isn’t enough,” he shrugged. “I don’t have anything else to give you.”

April set her jaw in frustration. “You’re not going to turn into your father,” she said, less kindly than she intended to. “We’re still us, you and me. Nothing has to change.”

“Then why change anything?” he rounded on her, nearly shouting. “Why bring my father into this? What’s he got to do with…?” He froze. His father had everything to do with it.

“Pete, I can’t. Every picture of marriage I’ve ever seen is weighted. I can’t be that with you.”

“You’re nothing like him, Michael. Having a family doesn’t change that. Getting Mated doesn’t change that. Even being a Dominant doesn’t change it. You’re not him. You won’t morph into him if we get married.”

It was Michael’s turn to look away although his eyes didn’t overflow. She smiled up at him, compassion in her eyes. There was no pity, no judgment. Only acceptance and empathy and love. “I’m scared too,” she told him. “But I want our children to grow up knowing they are _our_ children, and that there’s no difference between what their alpha dads have and what you and I have. I want it before we have anymore pups. I want to be your wife, Michael. I’ve never wanted anything this way before. Mating was a mandate. Music is a mandate. Having children is a mandate. Being Omega is a mandate. But this is something we can choose, something that no one else ever has to understand.”

Michael swallowed around the lump in his throat, unable to think of anything to say. She didn’t know what she was asking. What was a husband but another kind of alpha? How long before they fell into age-old roles of Top and Bottom? How deeply did patriarchy already have its clutches in Michael’s psyche, and how much deeper would it claw its way in if he put a collar around her finger, binding her to come when he beckoned? He wouldn’t mean to, not at first. But he had it in him. He could feel it. Hell, not fifteen minutes earlier, he’d strong-armed her out of the nursery and summarily marched her down the hall for a private audience. Even without knowing he was doing it, he was already lording his gender over her and treating her like a supplicant. Half of his friction with his father had always been having to answer to a man he felt superior to. Marriage was a one-way railroad straight to…_that._

She thought he was gentler than other men. She thought he was different because he embraced maternity. But he wasn’t.

But think as hard as he could, Michael couldn’t see any way out, not without breaking up with her, and he’d chew his own leg off before he could bring himself to do that.

“I need to think,” he told her. “Give me some time. Please, Pete.”

She nodded and stood up on tiptoe to kiss his forehead. “Whatever you decide, my love, I’m with you. I will still be here, no questions asked, no expectations, standing beside you. I will always love you, whatever comes.”

It was the same thing she’d said years ago when he told her he couldn’t be her boyfriend, and the dynamics hadn’t changed. What she meant was that she would wait patiently while he came to his senses and stopped fighting the inevitable. The gritty part was that he knew she had the right of it, no matter what he thought right now. For all the Omegas liked to grumble that Castiel always got his way, the truth was, sometimes the Alpha had to compromise. But April never did. Not for long. She could wait as long as it took, but in the end, she always got exactly what she wanted. And in the end, Michael always found himself happier than he expected to be, than he deserved to be, happier than he ever would have been if he’d followed his own impulses. April was in control of all of them. Always had been.

Michael could fume about how backwards that was. Or he could accept that reality was what it was.

He needed to talk to Dean. No one knew how to cut through Michael’s shit better than Dean. Michael pulled her into his embrace and kissed the top of her head. “We’ll figure it out,” he told her.

Despite the pressure, despite the unfairness of it all, despite his misgivings, Michael meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm supposed to be doing real work right now. But if I wanna get a chapter out, it was kind of now or never. Don't tell on me. 😉
> 
> Final word: I love every comment and every commenter. Right now, especially as the standards for acceptable discourse in other outlets have fallen into chaos and everyone's nerves are frayed beyond civility, I ask for an extra helping of grace where you can bring yourself to grant it. It is not my role to govern what anyone has to say, so I won't try to censor adults. Say what you need to. But realize that I am interested in hearing input of all kinds, the good and the not so. I prefer to hear criticism spoken politely, but I can take genuine critique even in a blunt form as long as it's not offered for the sole purpose of tearing me down or what I've created. The rule always stands that no one is required to read this story. So if you do, and you are compelled to write to me about how it hit you, know that you have my gratitude regardless of what you might say.


	18. Wednesday, August 11, 2021

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carefree days of summer are upon our Pack. Michael has a proposal for Cas, and the Alpha is listening. Evenings by the pool are routine with six pups to entertain. Routine, too, are Dean's mood swings. With another fall imminent, it's time to try a new tack.
> 
> And Gabriel being Gabriel.  
And April on the torture rack because...Alpha.  
And 3-year-olds are tattletales.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's election day 2020 in the US. For the love of this great Republic and all that it might someday be, cast your vote if you're eligible. Please, please, please.
> 
> I considered breaking this into two chapters because, as they tend to do, it got really long on me. But then I would be compelled to keep messing with it, and I needed to post today so I could focus on schoolwork.
> 
> Content warnings in the End Notes.
> 
> Y'all, my class is kicking my butt. I haven't had the free time I used to for storytelling, and what I have had has been stolen from things I should be doing. I should be working on projects. But my health is also crappy and writing this story is my escape, so even though chapters aren't coming as often as they used to, they're still coming.
> 
> Thanks to everyone reading. I still think we're all nuts. Thanks to Andi4, Jennyfly, Cake_Blindness, Falka_tyan, Wiseoldowl72, and Melodina for your continuous support when I'm bitching about my brain not working.
> 
> It's another slog through wordiness, but for once, I didn't skip the sticky stuff at the end. Enjoy.
> 
> (Edit: If your version turns to all italics a quarter of the way through, reload the page. I fixed it.)

NOW:

Michael rode silently beside Cas, steering the golf cart down the bumpy lawn toward the Guest House. Castiel’s eyes fixated on his tablet as usual. Michael navigated deftly between trees growing close to the barely-there path that meandered down into the shady copse where the two-story bungalow sat empty. He parked the cart and swung his long legs out of the driver’s seat, collecting a bundle of supplies from the back. Cas followed without looking up.

Michael unlocked the sliding glass door, entered, and plunked his duffel bag on the kitchen counter before making a beeline for the thermostat. “It shouldn’t need much cleaning, sir,” he called from the hallway. “It’s been locked up tight, and Monique does a run-through twice a month. Just clean linens and a once-over ought to do it.” Michael emerged again into the kitchen as the air conditioning kicked into high gear. “I’ll start dusting upstairs if you want to see to the jacuzzi.”

Cas thumbed his tablet off and set it down beside the duffel full of cleaning tools. “All right. Let’s make this quick, please, Omega. I have a conference at one and a great deal to accomplish before that.”

“It’s not going to take long. I have to be at work at noon, Cas.” Michael dumped the duffel out on the counter and selected the items he needed. With Fred still home sick and their three maids already picking up enough of the slack, Cas had volunteered to put on cleaning gloves himself and get down on his Alpha knees to scrub toilets in the Guest House to ready it for the impending arrival of April’s parents. They’d offered to come pup-sit during April’s and Cas’ cycle. Too, Cas suspected, they wanted to be among the first to know if more grand pups were on the way. He prayed Michael was right that the house was kept up in good condition. Cas wasn’t above scrubbing toilets, but he didn’t have much time to devote to the task. Michael disappeared upstairs. Cas went back out into the heat and rummaged in the patio storage cabinet for pool care chemicals. He cranked up the circulation pump on the jacuzzi and tested it. It needed a full shock of chlorine, but it hadn’t yet begun to show signs of bacterial growth. It didn’t smell bad. Cas rolled his sleeves up, wiped his already sweating forehead, and measured chemicals in the shade of the upstairs balcony, humming tunelessly to himself. By the time Cas finished sweeping the porch and clearing dust off the large outdoor dining table, Michael was back downstairs, separating linens out into piles for the three bedrooms. They worked quickly and collaboratively. There wasn’t a lot to say. In an hour, Michael was cinching up a garbage bag and shoving cleansers back into the duffel.

“It’s hard to believe how much Fred gets done, day to day,” Michael observed. “For an old man, he’s so on top of things, we’re almost lost without him.”

Cas pulled two beers from the refrigerator, topped them both, and handed one to Michael before grabbing his tablet and heading outside. Michael collected the duffle and followed his Alpha out onto the back porch where a breeze through the greenery provided just enough cooling to make the patio comfortable. Cas checked his watch and then took a seat at the table.

“We need to bring in a trainee butler, Alpha,” Michael told him as he slid into a chair opposite the man. “Fred won’t be with us forever, and he’ll never accept a woman taking his butler’s duties. I’ve got a job listing drafted for you to look at. We can start advertising for an assistant on Monday.”

“Fred’s views on appropriately gendered division of labor within the Pack staff do not determine whom we hire to replace him,” Cas stated rather coldly. Michael frowned and took a cool drink.

“Right,” he said skeptically. “Sir, you would do anything for that old man. If he wants a man to take his place, then we’ll hire a man…and a Primate at that. You’re not fooling anyone.”

Cas thumbed a line through the condensation of his bottle and set his eyes into the tree line in the distance.

“You can’t stop him from aging, Alpha. And you can’t make him live forever by wishing it. I’m all for holding his place here as long as he wants it, but we can’t pretend it’ll be forever.”

Cas nodded. It took a moment before he solidified that nod into words, but he got there. “You’re right, Michael. Your job post draft. It’s saved where I can get to it?”

“It’s in my Pack folder on the shared site, Sir.”

Cas booted his tablet back up, navigated, skimmed, and nodded with a tightness around his mouth. “Yes, this will do. Post for another maid as well, please. I anticipate more work soon as the Pack grows.”

“God knows if we add another set of triplets, we’ll need more than one more maid,” Michael observed. He turned his face to the breeze and took a drink before taking a bracing breath and facing Cas again. “While I’ve got you here, Sir…” Michael leaned forward onto his forearms, studying the table before him. “I have an idea I want to run by you.”

“About?” Castiel set his tablet, dark now, onto the table and picked up his beer. The breeze ruffled his hair.

Michael licked his lips and looked up. “About a way to give our Pack hierarchy some teeth. I’ve been thinking about how you laid that out for me back when the pups were tiny. You remember? You swatted my nose and shoved it down into my own confusion about Pack and hierarchy, and a lightbulb came on for me.”

“I remember,” Cas said. “I doubt you would have characterized our discussion that way at the time.”

“Whatever,” Michael remarked casually, dismissively. “The point is no one but you in this Pack puts any teeth into maintaining their positions. You’re all teeth, Sir, but the rest of us are complacent. I’m worried about that as the Pack matures. We’re too comfortable sitting wherever you decided to rank us. It’s…tidy. Too…civilized if you know what I mean.”

“Hmm,” Cas responded.

“Do you see it?” 

“Perhaps. What did you have in mind?” Cas leaned back in his chair and took another sip, but Michael could tell he was thinking. It was a gamble, Michael’s idea. Cas wasn’t shy about taking credit for how contented his Pack was. There was virtually no in-fighting, no jockeying for position, no lingering resentment as Castiel brought outsiders in and set them above family – Sam and Jess had both moved lower on the ladder because of the Alpha’s additions, and they seemed content to let things be.

“You said it yourself, Cas,” Michael continued. “The hierarchy is real, and it needs to have teeth.”

“Go on.”

“Well, Sir, last quarter’s Pack income broke records, as did the one before that. That’s even with the general economy in shambles with the pandemic. We’re doing really well, I’m sure you’re aware.” Michael’s eyes flashed golden as he took the bit in his teeth.

“Yes, your reports have made that abundantly clear, Michael. And your management of Pack resources has been stellar. What do you propose?” Cas met the man’s eye with a slight frown. He could so often predict what people were going to say to him before they spoke. It was an odd sensation to be caught flatfooted. He had no idea what Michael was about to ask.

Michael’s enthusiasm leaked out a bit more. He adjusted again in his chair, leaning even further forward. He licked his lips again. “I want to dole out distributions, monetary distributions. We can afford it. I want to build in a Pack-benefit that proves belonging to _this_ Pack is about more than just prestige. I want it to be _lucrative – _ personally and individually lucrative. And I want to adjust quarterly payouts based on Pack rank. The higher the rank, the more money a wolf takes home.” Michael’s eyes sparkled.

Cas sat back, shocked, staring. Then he leaned back in and steepled his fingers below his lips. “I’m listening.”

“Look, we set our ranks based solely on Secondary and Tertiary designation. That will hold for a while. But there’s more to a person than their ratings. Look at Dean and Sam. In a real scuffle, the winner isn’t always going to be Dean. If Sam challenged Dean at a vulnerable moment, the beta might take the trophy. And Cain? I’m convinced Sam belongs above him. He could challenge for it, but he’s so comfortable right now there’s no motivation. What’s the point in a rank challenge if there’s nothing at stake?”

“You want to engender bloodshed in my Pack, Omega?” Cas asked coldly.

Michael set his jaw and nodded. “Yeah, I do. Or some other form of challenge. Doesn’t have to be a knock-down-drag-out. Look, I want this Pack to hold forever, Sir. I want it healthy. I want ranks to mean something. And I want them to sort themselves out according to both the statistical truths from the ratings _and_ the intangible realities no one can predict. To do that, there has to be a benefit to holding a higher rank than someone else, something better than the right to dole out punishments or get the biggest dessert. Only me and you would ever be motivated by control, Cas.”

Cas set his eyes into the distance over Michael’s left shoulder, deep in thought. “Talk to me about these distributions,” he said at last.

Michael grinned. Beneath the table, his knee bounced in excitement. “It works like this. You and Dean don’t get anything. You’re the Pack leaders. It’s yours to give, so taking a check is redundant. Omegas don’t get anything. Pack hierarchy, you see. Teeth. Hierarchies are real, and all that. It’s the folks in the middle who have a vested interest in shouldering into the highest position they can defend.”

Cas frowned deeper. “Michael, I’m not convinced a prorated distribution is in any way motivational…”

“Sir, no offense, but I don’t think you have a realistic perspective of money as a motivator. I know it means nothing to you. We can get into a debate about privilege and worldview all day long, but the point is, everyone in this Pack besides you and Dean is going to care how big that check is.”

Cas shook his head slowly with his brow knit. “Sam won’t care.”

Michael laughed. He rapped on the table with his knuckle and raised his brows. “If we set it up right, he will. Rank number three needs to walk away with more than what Sam and Jess take home together if they both stay where they are. That third spot needs to be the plum. A wolf has to _earn_ it and have the weight to hold onto it. You set the rules of a challenge, Cas. Put some safeguards in place. Make it fair and regimented. But at the close of each quarter, whatever the ranks are determines the size of the check they walk away with.”

“Jess will eat Sarah’s lunch,” Cas murmured, envisioning it. 

“Then Sarah shouldn’t be ranked above Jess,” Michael finished for him logically. “You don’t have to let them beat on each other. Make it a challenge that pits determination and stamina as the characteristics being tested, not who’s better at gouging someone else’s eyes out.”

Cas sucked a long breath in through his nose and blew it out his mouth. “How much?”

Michael smirked. “Twenty percent of Pack gains for the quarter.”

“Jesus Christ, Michael!”

Michael continued without reacting to Castiel’s shock. “Split it into five checks. If we add more adult betas or alphas to the Pack, we can talk about whether to split it out more or leave it at five. But for now, third rank takes fifty percent of the distribution. Fourth rank takes thirty. Fifth rank gets ten. Sixth rank gets seven, leaving three for the lowest eligible wolf.” Michael let it sink in, and then he added, “As it stands now, Sam and Jess as a couple will receive thirty-three percent of the quarterly distribution. If you approve the recommended twenty percent payout, that’s not chump change, but to a man like Sam with a family and a head full of ambitions, that seventeen point difference between his take-home and Cain’s is going to look mighty attractive. Make it clear that the winner of a direct formal challenge wins more than just the right to a bigger slice of chocolate pie at Friday dinners, and we’ve got ourselves a self-sustaining, defensible hierarchy that will stand up to critique from the outside.”

“Ten percent of quarterly gains,” Cas mumbled, still thinking hard. “We need those gains reinvested for the stability of Pack standing. I won’t bankrupt this Pack over a wild-hared gamble to buy the loyalty of my betas. And not quarterly. Semi-annually. We can’t afford to encourage disengagement of any of our members from their paying jobs.”

Michael scoffed. “Sir, it’s not enough for anyone to live on, even for the top spot. But as a motivational bonus…” He let the idea linger in the air. “Could turn out to be quite the recruiting tool as well, I’m sure you’ve noticed. One day we’ll want to expand again. We need more betas, Sir. We need some genetic diversity in our ranks, especially as our pups get older.”

Cas smiled slyly down at the beer in his hand. “You really have thought this through.”

“Sir, the stability of the Pack is of personal importance to me. Like I said, I’ve been mulling it over since you went all Alpha posturing on me and set me straight. We need something like this or we’re all going to grow fat, stupid, and lazy. Hierarchies don’t maintain themselves.”

Cas chuckled. He stretched across the table with his bottle and tapped Michael’s longneck. “I’m proud of you, Omega. It is an elegant plan. We’ll need to discuss how we prevent cheating, alliances, and cut-throat undercutting that would degrade Pack morale. Have you discussed it with Dean yet?”

“No, Sir. It’s your call, primarily. I figured if you nixed it straight outta the gate, there’d be no point bringing it up with Dean.”

Cas got up and checked the jacuzzi once more. He turned the valve to add more water and stood with his hip against the brick wall while the level topped off. He cut his eyes toward Michael. Michael was watching him.

Cas turned the water off.

“Sir, we can afford twenty percent, especially if you cut it down to semi-annual.”

“How many children do you want, Michael?” Cas asked abruptly. “Total.”

“Um, I dunno.” Michael blushed and broke his eyes away from the piercing blue of his Alpha’s.

“Yes, you do,” Cas contradicted. “You have a number, and you have a reason for that number.”

Michael scrubbed his hands over his face and emerged again with determination. “All right,” the Omega declared. “Fine. I figure ten. Somewhere around there. Ten should be about right.”

Cas nodded to himself and took his chair again. The smile on his face grew thoughtful. “You can’t field a soccer team with ten.”

“No, but you can play a full basketball game,” Michael parried. “Or fill a baseball roster with a designated hitter and a relief pitcher.”

Cas chuckled. His bottle was empty. He checked his watch again. He had time. The Guest House had needed less attention than he expected. April’s parents weren’t due until tomorrow evening. Cas’ meeting at one was remote, so he could dial in from here if he needed to. Nothing else on his agenda was more pressing than Michael right now. “Why ten?” he asked. This conversation was important, and it wasn’t often that he had Michael to himself.

Michael folded his arms on the table in front of him and cocked his head. “Back home,” he began, “Pop is Alpha, but there’s just Rachel and me as his heirs. Our house isn’t all that big or showy. It’s not the richest Pack in the Metroplex. But our compound has over thirty homes in it. What we lack in clout, we make up for in size and sprawl. I have cousins out the wazoo. A few older. Most younger. There were always pups around. All different ages. The older ones looked after the younger. It wasn’t even considered babysitting; it was just what we did. We looked after each other. Scuffled and fought like families do. But I’d protect any one of them with my life, Castiel. They’re my blood.” 

Michael paused as he remembered. A beatific smile formed at the memories. He looked up. “The thing is, it’s the age differences that made it feel that way. Having pups at all different ages around all the time turns a family into something magical. There’s always someone to look up to, always someone to get into trouble with, always someone to hide from or teach or protect or pull pranks on. We were our own Pack within a Pack, complete with dynamics and ranks and the whole Pack experience in miniature. My Pop fucked up a lot with me. He’s far from perfect, Cas. But he surrounded Rachel and me with kids we could practice how to be Pack around. He taught us what that means for real.”

Michael suddenly chuckled. His eyes lit up golden at a memory. “I remember when I was thirteen and hungry enough to eat my folks out of house and home, I used to show up at Aunt Kelly’s table at five. She served an early supper so Uncle Jude could go work the night shift at six-thirty without missing supper with his pups. Our Pack, kids just kinda ate at whoever’s table was closest come mealtime. Most of the time, there were extra kids around, and we’d all get fed. So, yeah, Aunt Kelly’s at five. Then I’d sneak over to Uncle Jacob’s at six-fifteen and eat again. Mommy always served hers late because as Alpha-mate, she had to keep a formal table in case the Pack had guests. So, after supper with Uncle Jacob, I’d go on home and eat Mommy’s cooking.” Michael chuckled again. “She was so mad when she found out. Not for table-jumping – for lying about it. I was making up all these excuses for where I’d been every day. Man, that woman can wield a wooden kitchen spoon like you wouldn’t believe for someone her size.” Michael laughed fondly. “You wouldn’t think it to look at her. But I got it just as bad from Aunt Kelly because I lied to her too. Think I got permanent nerve damage from those spoons.” He swept an errant tear from his eye.

“Man, I…I want that for our pups. I want it so bad. I want all the adults in the Pack to feel like the pups belong to everyone. I want the pups to feel surrounded by grownups they can trust to keep their feet pointed straight ahead. It’s not the same with four of them all the same age. We need to space the rest out so they get the whole experience.” Michael realized he’d kind of gone overboard, and he looked back across the table and met Castiel’s eye again. The Alpha looked softer than Michael could remember seeing him for a long time.

Michael sighed heavily and stood up to stow their empty bottles and the duffel bag in the golf cart before turning back to face his Alpha. “Say something,” he prompted uncomfortably.

“Ten seems about right to me,” Cas said. “Although, I come to that number from the opposite direction.” 

Michael stayed several yards away, rooted by the cart, watching and listening. It felt like Cas was confessing something private. The Alpha swallowed and went on. His scent was spiky, and Michael’s Omega read that as cautionary.

“I grew up here,” he pointed out. “It was just me and Gabe, Mother and Father. And Fred, of course, although we were never allowed to forget that there is a necessary distance between Pack and Primate staff. The head maid was a lovely woman named Nancy. I grew close to them both.”

Michael swallowed and edged closer. His instincts forced wariness when in the presence of a vulnerable Alpha.

Cas held his lower lip in his teeth for a moment, reminiscing, before he flicked his eyes back up to Michael. Cas huffed a soft laugh. “Dean had a nuclear family of four as well, but I gather our two experiences couldn’t have been more different. This house, back then…it was vast and empty and cold. And silent. There was a loneliness to the place that felt steeped into its bones.” Cas carded a hand through his hair and glanced away again. “Mother was a disaster, I won’t lie. But Father sometimes surprised me. He could be thoughtful and generous. He gave his time to us both. He was not unkind.” Cas frowned and retreated into his memories. “But he had no warmth,” he added at last. “Gabriel and I learned to lean into each other. What I learned about Pack, I learned from my brother…and later from his beautiful mate. I thought I knew how families worked. It felt isolated to me, but it was all I knew, and when you’re young, whatever you know feels normal. We had few friends outside the gate. Gabe was liked well enough at school, but he never made any close friends there. He was forever tangling into crowds much too old for him and not attached to school at all, from what I could tell. And me…” Cas chuckled again and shook his head. “I was ungainly and odd. And _always_ in trouble at school. It’s possible I sat inside for more recesses than I was allowed to participate in. It was difficult to make friends when I was always in detention or standing in the corner.”

Michael chuckled softly, nodding his head. He could relate to some extent, although Michael had never struggled to make friends. He’d just never wanted them. His cousins were friends enough for Michael.

“The point is,” Cas sighed and straightened. “We are each of us scarred from our upbringing. We cannot change our past. But we can filter through what we experienced and reject for our future what hurt us back then. Even the most damaging past may have had moments of light. I refuse to mimic my childhood, Michael, but the house itself isn’t the problem. I plan to fill that great house with light and love, song and laughter, tears and arguing. We won’t always get along, but we will be _alive_ and real. …And loud, as long as Dean is part of the mix.”

Michael studied the man before easing closer. “We won’t always be around, Alpha,” he said. “Even more than growing up with siblings to teach them how to be Pack, our pups need us to build them the foundations of a Pack the likes of which cannot be challenged from the outside. Ten pups means a formidable second generation, no matter how many outsiders we bring in. They’ll be unassailable, a united front – ten second-generation families wide.”

“Yes,” Cas replied darkly. “They will be.”

“You mean not to let the Omegas go,” Michael guessed.

Cas glanced up at him in surprise. “I have no authority to hold them here,” he admitted. “But I intend to build a Pack that is difficult to walk away from, and I mean to welcome anyone who Mates an Omega member of my Pack into the fold, even if they are a Top.”

Michael laughed. “Just when I think I’ve seen the depth of your conceit, Alpha, you show me more.”

Cas laughed. He considered reprimanding the Omega for cheek but chose to let it go. Michael had a point. The Omega went on, “You really think we can put a Pack together that’s so prestigious it would draw an alpha away from their birth pack when they Mate one of our Omegas?”

“First of all,” Cas said in his own defense. “We don’t have any unMated Omegas yet. And second, I hear the Winchester Pack pays dividends quarterly.”

Michael laughed again. “Semi-annually, actually,” he amended, and Cas nodded. “Look,” Michael said, “I hear you. If I got to choose between my Pop’s Pack and yours, I’d pick this one every time. But no Pack Alpha is going to willingly sign away their own Tops to come live with us when there’s a Winchester Omega on the table to give their own Pack influence. The more successful we are at convincing Lupins to join up into large, powerful packs, the greater the chance our pups will Mate someone with an Alpha who holds their strings. And our Omegas will be prized.”

“You underestimate me,” Castiel told him. “I don’t play fair where my Pack is concerned.”

Michael shrugged and conceded. The man had a point. Given normal odds, Michael knew better than to bet on any other Alpha’s stubbornness over Castiel’s. Cas stood and stretched his arms over his head, baring his midriff, and then he picked his way around the table toward the golfcart. Michael stopped him with a hand on Cas’ arm. 

“April wants to get married,” Michael said quietly.

Cas gave away that it wasn’t news to him by his unsurprised reaction. He sobered and put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I can guess what has you spooked about that, my friend,” Cas said gently. “But you are not your father any more than I am mine. We are all scarred by our upbringing. If it makes you feel any better, I see a great deal of your mother in you, and she is someone any one of us would be proud to emulate.”

Michael looked down and kicked at a pebble at his feet, sending it skittering. “Isn’t this where you explain to me that my mother smells repressed or something? That she’s stuck under my Pop’s heel?”

Cas smirked. “Like April’s mother? No, Michael. Your mother is not stifled in any way. She is strong and vibrant and living up to her full potential. Your mother is an example to the rest of us about balance and fulfillment.”

Michael shook his head. “No. She’s a perfect little Omega housewife. She’s never once contradicted my Pop, not on anything.”

Cas squeezed Michael’s shoulder. “Looks can be deceiving. Don’t think about what she _could_ be, Michael. Think about what she wants to be.”

“They got married, you know,” Michael blurted. “I was ten. Rachel was seven. There was a weird movement running through the Universist churches back then, you remember? Extolling the virtues of marrying your mate, saying it tied mates together spiritually as well as metaphysically. Half the couples in our church got hitched that year. I was the goddamned ring bearer for fuck’s sake. Rachel was their flower girl. And the thing is, after they married, they were different than before. They were…less…Pop was less… abrasive before. He used to listen to her. Used to ask her opinion. I dunno what changed, but he put a ring on her finger and suddenly, he treated her like his property instead of his partner. And then I Presented a couple of years later, and he just swept me right into his pile of owned crap along with Mommy. Cas, I know what marriage is, and I don’t want any part of it.”

“I’m not here to convince you to marry April, Michael,” Cas told him.

Michael broke free and stalked to the cart. He climbed in and pressed the start button.

“Please don’t walk away from me,” Cas chided. Michael stopped the engine. He placed his hands in his lap and stared straight out in front of himself.

Cas slid into the seat beside him and allowed the distance of a side-by-side position to give Michael a little space. He left one foot on the ground. “I’m not negating what you experienced, Michael. I only ask you to consider. What you heard and saw from your parents may have had less to do with a before and after to their wedding vows and more to do with you emerging from childhood and reaching adolescence. If your wolf developed at a standard pace, then it would have been a tentative presence in your psyche at eight or nine, and a maturing designation…”

“…at ten,” Michael finished for him. “Permanent enmeshment in pack dynamic begins at ten,” Michael recited from his training. “Pups begin to understand the undercurrents of pack subtext…”

“Michael, your decision to marry or not is entirely between you and April. But you need to figure out if you’re reticent because you don’t want to be married or because you’re convinced that there is no version of marriage that looks different from what your parents did.”

“Dude, it’s not just my parents. Look at you two. Mating is unbalanced, right? But it’s natural and effortless. It doesn’t take any crazy untangling to figure out where everyone fits. Marriage though? I don’t have a clue how that’s supposed to shake out, but I’ve never seen anyone do it the way the movies make it out to be. It’s not a partnership. It’s always a power exchange, Cas. Always. It’s supposed to be a fucking partnership, but no one ever makes that happen. If we get married, I’m going to become a Top with her. Don’t even pretend that’s not what happens. Show me anyone who didn’t wind up that way.”

Cas pressed his lips tightly. “Michael, I think you may be missing the point.”

Michael stiffened. His jaw worked for a moment, and then he spoke through nearly clenched teeth. “I don’t want to hear it, Castiel, not from you. Forgive me, Sir, but ethically, you’re on shaky ground as it is where our relationship is concerned. You took me for granted and used me to give you some breathing space between you and Pete so you could go be Dean’s husband. You just took me through that whole discussion about fielding a baseball team to show that we don’t have to repeat the mistakes of our parents. I’m not confused about who I am. I am not my mother. Whether the darkness inside me resembles my father’s darkness or not is irrelevant. Don’t you get it? I can’t bind myself to anyone without owning them. I don’t carry that gene, Alpha. And she… She…”

“She what?” Cas asked tersely back.

Michael huffed in frustration. “I don’t know how, but she’s manipulating me…”

Cas laughed. “Yes, our lovely blonde waif has a bit of a _Boy who Cried Wolf_ about her now, doesn’t she? Did she wheedle you into broaching the subject of matrimony?”

Michael looked at his Alpha and chewed on the question before softly admitting, “No, she asked me straight out.”

“It was April who proposed?”

“Yes.”

The men stared blankly at each other.

“Oh, fuck it all, Cas! Don’t you see? I can’t tell her no. She’s played it so that I’m stuck! It’s the first time she’s been that straightforward, and if I turn her down, it’ll just prove to her that direct communication is a dead-end street, and she’ll go right back to scheming below the surface! Damnit!”

“Quite the cynical view you have of this woman we both love,” Cas observed dryly.

“Don’t lecture me about trust issues,” Michael said. “She made her bed.”

Cas pulled his foot off the ground and settled more firmly in his seat. “Are you angry at April, Michael, or at your own reticence?”

Michael started the cart and turned to reverse back up through the trees. “You know what? I have no idea. I just know I feel fucking trapped, and I feel like she’s holding the key to this cage I’m in.”

“She has a right to ask for what she wants,” Cas said. “And no matter what message it might send, you have a right to answer in the way that is best for you. You aren’t trapped.”

“You’re going to go in there in a couple of days and knock her up again,” Michael added as a non sequitur.

Cas nodded, trusting Michael’s peripheral vision to catch it. “I agree with you about spacing pups out though. We plan to implement measures of restraint.”

Michael snorted, steering the cart around the house to the garage. “Measures of restraint? You know Pete wants to be married before the pup comes. Or pups. Whatever.”

“Michael,” Cas stopped the Omega from climbing out once he’d parked and extracted the key. Michael paused with an impatient air. “She loves you. Whatever you decide, she will always love you. Please be circumspect about how you communicate your answer, whether it’s a yes or no. Don’t burn bridges you don’t have to. And you two need to have some serious conversations about trust. If you don’t trust her to accept your answer and to honor your right to give it faithfully…”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t be getting married?” Michael finished for him with a pointed look. Michael cocked his head slightly. “So, you have no qualms about me putting a ring on your mate’s finger? All for it, are you?”

Castiel growled softly. “We’ve discussed this, Omega. Disagree with me all you want, but don’t be an ass.”

Michael mumbled an apology and left the garage with the duffel bag over his shoulder. Cas settled back in the seat and collected himself. That conversation had gone about as smoothly as he’d expected. Michael still needed to bounce his nerves and his reluctance off Dean.

***************

Dean joined Jess, Gabe, and Kate in the pool as soon as he stripped out of his work clothes that evening. Joined them by cannonballing right into the middle with a “Whoop!” All six pups loved the swimming pool, but it wasn’t until the sun hit a softer angle and neared the tree line that the adults felt it safe enough to allow them more than a few minutes of water play that wouldn’t result in burned skin. It had become routine to let them wear themselves out just before supper. The Pack congregated on the back patio more evenings than not, sometimes eating outside between splashing cannonballs or elegant swan dives into the cool depths of crystalline blue waters. Kali was absent tonight, Dean noted. She had a monumental project underway and would be scarce for another few weeks. Michael was working the evening shift as usual. He wouldn’t be home until nine. Cas and April were probably off slaking a mutual rising temperature, working up an appetite of their own as their blood heated up for their shared cycle in a couple of days. No doubt Sam had his face in his books or shoved up Benny’s ass again. Sam and Benny had grown nearly inseparable as Benny prepared to hand his job title over to his protégé.

“Unca Dean! Back up. I’n gonna jump! Look how far!” J.T. vaulted off the side of the pool and into Dean’s waiting hands. Dean let him submerge with the force of his jump but brought him back up smoothly. The pup sputtered, clinging to Dean’s arms. He shook his head like a dog, laughing. Dean held his hand up for a high five and then launched the boy out across the water to splash Gabe full in the face before Gabe fished him out. Gabe returned the favor, pulling Hank and Emma into the battle as well until Jess called a cautionary halt to the mayhem before it got out of control. 

Dean was still chuckling lightly as he eased over to the shallow end with Emma clinging to his neck. Kate sat on a step in the water with Alex on one side of her and Kat on the other. Jimmy was taking his turn clinging to the side of the pool and practicing kicking his legs behind him.

“Daddy!” Jimmy called. “I did it! Did you see? I swimmed all the way!” Jimmy’s enthusiasm brought a wide grin to Dean’s face.

“Show me, J.D. Let me see.” Dean pulled back a few steps, giving the boy a little room. “All the way to me, buddy.”

Kate held him steady as he turned, pressed his pruny toes to the side of the pool and kicked clumsily off. Hands clasped tightly to each other out in front of him, Jimmy kicked wildly, more noise and motion than force, and it was his push off the wall that propelled him forward, not his flailing kicks, but he made it two yards across and into Dean’s arms without stalling. Dean swept him up, tickling his ribs as he lifted his pup into the air. All the pups wore water wings. They were fearless in the pool. It took at least three sets of adult eyes to watch over them. They had all become water bugs over the summer, drawn to the pool over any other entertainment, so they had lessons to teach them swimming and survival skills. They all basked in showing off their new skills.

“My turn!” shouted Kat, clambering over Kate’s lap. Dean resituated so that the swimming route took the pups along the pool’s edge, putting him in closer proximity to Kate. He didn’t comment on her black swimsuit, so at odds with everyone else’s nudity. If Sarah had been here, she would be covered as well. There was room in the Pack for personal preferences that differed. No one cared one way or another. Kate wasn’t shy, just reserved. This wasn’t her Pack, and she found subtle ways to remind herself of that. Dean thought she might be finding it harder and harder to recall why she needed reminding, and he thought it might be time to force a lever into that doubt and pry it apart a little bit.

“How’d it go today?” Dean asked Kate as Emma climbed his back and resecured her arms around his throat.

Kate straightened her leg beneath the water to give Alex something to hold onto as he splashed off the step toward his dad. “The therapy or the coffee date?” Kate asked Dean.

Dean smirked. “Your _date,”_ he clarified. He held his arms out, letting four pups dangle from various spots on his person.

“It wasn’t really a date, alpha.” But she blushed. Dean grinned knowingly. “All right, fine. It was a date. But it’s not serious. We’re friends. If something else is going to grow from that, it’s got a lot of growing to do.”

“Uh huh. Did you fuck him?”

Kate rolled her eyes. “That’s a swear word, Dean. Rule eight. I’m telling Michael unless you drop it.”

“Eh,” Dean shrugged. “I’m due with Michael anyway. So? Did you? You should, kid. You need it.”

Jess joined Kate by the step with both of her boys in tow, but she didn’t sit. Jess’ breasts were peppered with purple bite-marks and hickeys, and even beneath the water, the bruises on her ass were visible.

“Aunt Jess, Daddy said _’fuck’,”_ Kat tattled.

“Hey,” Dean intervened, layering an alpha tone into his voice. “What did I tell you about that word? Huh? Grownups say that word. Pups don’t. Apologize, Kat.”

“Not s’posed to say that word, Daddy,” Emma agreed with her sister. “O-pop said. Papa spanks for that word.”

“You’re right, ladies. My mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll tell O-pop when he gets home, and he’ll set me straight. Right now though, my daughter still needs to say sorry for repeating it. Kat?”

“Sorry, Daddy.”

“Good girl. Next time you need to tell on Daddy, you say ‘Daddy said a bad word’. There’s no reason to repeat words you’re too young to be saying. Come on. Dinner. I’m starving. Who’s starving with me?” Dean sloughed most of the pups into the shallow water, hauling Emma, still clinging to his back, out of the pool. He leaned low and let Emma slide down to her feet as her siblings and cousins climbed dutifully out of the pool and scampered toward the towels.

“Walk!” Kate called.

“Hey,” Dean turned his eyes from the pups once Gabe caught up to assist them with drying off. Dean stalled Kate at the pool’s edge. “Kate. Look.”

“Dean, it was just a date. All right? I’m not ready for anything more. I don’t need a lover, not yet. I just need some space.”

Dean crossed his arms over his chest and held his ground and her eyes. “You don’t need space, Kate. You’re stuck, and you know it. You need a pack. You need more out of an alpha than you’re letting me in on. You need to get laid, for one. I know for a fact you haven’t done the therapy you promised Mildred you’d keep up with. You’re making me look like a shit foster here. Let me help. Please. At least let me set you up with a quick contract session.”

Kate blanched, lowering her eyes and then cutting them sharply when all six pups crowed in delight as Castiel emerged from the house wearing a light robe.

“Papa! Daddy said Nanny Kate was fuck!” Kat told her father enthusiastically. Kate snorted. Dean rolled his eyes.

“Hm,” Cas replied, pulling a chair out from beneath the table and sitting down. “I don’t like hearing that word, do I? What did I say would happen if I hear that word?”

Dean leaned close to Kate’s ear. “We need you, Kate. This Pack needs you, and you need us. I know you’re scared, but you can’t keep treading water. One of these times you’re not going to make it back up to the surface.”

“Alpha’s calling you, Dean,” she replied. Dean sighed and ran his hand through his hair, slicking it back. Kate pulled away in search of a towel. Dean chose to air dry, turning toward the table to face the music. Cas had Kat standing between his knees with her eyes fixed on his. Dean felt for her, but he’d tried to warn her. Kat was a child who learned most everything the hard way if she learned at all.

“Did you say a word O-pop told you not to say?” Cas asked his daughter.

“Daddy said it, not me, Papa,” she defended.

“Kathleen?” Cas prompted again.

“But he said it first!”

“You know that word is not for children’s mouths.” Cas glanced up at his husband, annoyed but confident that the little peccadillo would be swiftly handled. He let the moment lengthen just a bit until Kat dropped her eyes and shuffled her feet.

“Sorry, Papa,” she whispered.

Cas lifted her face with a finger under her chin, making certain his expression was stern. “Kat, it is not your job to correct your Daddy’s mistakes. That’s my job and O-pop’s. We don’t need you to tell us when he breaks my rules. Papa knows already. You need to leave Daddy to me, and then you won’t get in trouble when he does.” Cas turned her to stand facing his thigh, and he popped her butt twice with a cupped hand that delivered a loud smacking sound but only a little sting. Kat wailed and dove into his chest, sobbing disconsolately. Cas picked her up and cradled her, swaying and whispering forgiveness and praise.

When he set her down and thumbed her tears off her cheeks, she was already finished crying. She sniffled a little. Cas nodded his head toward Kate to send his daughter off to dress for supper, and Kat went without a fuss, her bare little bum not even pinked. Cas turned his eyes to Dean, standing a few feet away staring into the sparse clouds high above them, his hands behind his back.

“Dean.”

“Yeah, I slipped, sir. Sorry about that.”

“That’s a Pack rule, Dean, not a preference.”

“It was a slip-up, Cas.”

“I suggest you take this seriously,” Cas growled. “Your slip-up just dragged your daughter down with you. Ten extra for using my name.”

“Ten?! It’s usually five!”

“Arguing earns you ten more.”

Dean opened his mouth to protest further but then snapped it shut and clenched his jaw. “Fine,” he gritted.

Cas cocked his head. “Interesting. I wonder if I allow you to keep digging just how deep you will go.” Cas’ eyes dropped to Dean’s dick as it twitched and stiffened a little.

“It’s a bullshit rule, sir. You only made that rule to suck up to Michael and to give you that much more leverage over making me your lapdog.” As usual, Dean had no idea his mouth was going to choose the direction it did until the words were out, but he wasn’t inclined to take them back. Cas’ face flattened. He’d registered the drop of a second forbidden swear word. And while Cas wasn’t going to argue that forbidding swearing in front of their children was anything but a control ploy, it was still a rule – one that Dean understood.

“Inside, Dean. My office. Now.” 

Dean glowered for a moment with a snarl and then stormed through the door, nearly bowling over April and the tray of drinks she carried as she appeared in the French door wearing a robe that matched Castiel’s. Jess rescued April’s tray. Gabe steadied the girl. Cas rose heavily to his feet and followed the way Dean had gone. The Alpha paused by Jess as she set the tray on the table. Cas leaned over her with a cool hand on her towel-covered bruised backside.

“Is this okay, beta?” he asked her cryptically. “Are you injured?”

“I’m fine, Alpha,” she replied, straightening and unwrapping the towel to show him the damage. “I’m on the outs with Sam, and I owe him more than this, but he’s taking care of it.” Her lashes looked pretty against the blush of her cheeks.

“Have him check in with me,” Cas instructed. “I expect a report on any behavior that results in damage this extensive.”

“Yes, Alpha,” Jess responded. “I’ll tell him.”

Castiel cleared his throat and announced to everyone, “I don’t allow nudity at my dinner table, Winchesters. Please dress and assemble back here for dinner. I will return shortly. Wait for me before serving your plates, please.” Castiel left them with brusque words still ringing in the air. Gabe paused with his hands prepared to fasten his jeans and then shoved them down his legs again. Jess rolled her eyes and popped his ass while he was bent over to pull his feet free.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Save it, Gabe,” Jess chided. “He meant you, too. Put your pants on.”

“He said Winchesters. I’m not a Winchester,” he complained, rubbing his butt. Jimmy giggled and reached up to help him erase the sting.

“Don’t make this evening harder on your brother,” Jess pleaded. “He’s miserable enough as it is with his Rut this close. Didn’t you see his eyes?”

“Oh, please,” Gabe scoffed, but he put his jeans back on and helped Kate dress six little squirmy bodies.

“What happened?” April asked. She divvied glasses around the table according to everyone’s regular seats and preferred beverage. Like her mate, April showed signs of an impending cycle. Her skin was warm and flushed. Her eyes were bloodshot and dilated. Her hair hung lank. She had managed a full day with Matt, working out some technical intricacies on the piano, but her fingers felt tangled and clumsy, and she didn’t know that the work had gained her anything.

“Dean happened,” Kate answered. “He’s trying to convince me to join the Pack by showing me how much Top support there is here for Subs.” The pups understood little of what their nanny said except the phrase ‘join the Pack’, and with that, they began a raucous and joyful cacophony of celebratory cheering, jumping up and down jubilantly. Kate smiled at their joy and let them shout.

April grinned at her friend. She scooped Alex up and set him on her lap. “Dean isn’t the only one campaigning for you to join us. You belong here, Kate. With us.”

“Good god, what a noise,” Cain grumbled as he emerged from the house.

“Aufa Cain!” Jimmy greeted at the top of his lungs. “Nanny Kate is gonna be Pack!”

“Is she now?” Cain answered looking up and catching the girl’s blushing profile as she dodged him. Cain lifted Jimmy and set him in his chair with an affectionate ruffle to his soft hair. 

Kat tugged at Cain’s pant seam, looking up. “Daddy said she’s s’posed to fu… To do that word. Daddy said it. That word. The fu-word.”

“Kathleen Marie,” April rebuked. “Language. You mind your business, young lady.”

Alex looked up at his mother. “Papa spanked Kat, Mama. She said the word. Papa spanked her.”

“Oh, my goodness, what have you all been up to this afternoon without O-pop here to keep you behaving yourselves?” April laughed good-naturedly.

“We swimmed, Aunt April,” Hank explained, climbing into his chair. “I was best. I jumped so far. And Unca Dean throwed me.”

Cas closed the office door behind him. Dean was already bare and standing in the corner with his fingers laced behind his head. “What’s going on, Dean? I don’t smell a spiral.”

“No, sir. Just my smart mouth. It gets away from me sometimes,” Dean said without turning.

Castiel studied him, registering his posture, his language and tone. “Dean, I want you to tell me what your wolf is doing right now. Can you see him?”

“Yes, sir. He’s watching me right now with his head low and wary. He’s paying close attention. I think he’s hoping to slide in if we give him a gap to get through.” Dean’s shoulders were easy and relaxed. He was still beautifully naked and slightly damp from his swim.

“Am I right in assessing that you are fully Primary, then?” Cas asked him.

Dean scoffed. Cas didn’t need to ask that question. If Dean could see his wolf, he wasn’t _in_ his wolf, and there was nothing alpha about Dean’s current attitude. The logic wasn’t hard on this one.

Castiel waited patiently. Dean rolled his shoulders and touched one knee to the wall a few times as he fidgeted. His butt muscles flexed. His heel began a rhythmic thumping against the floor. Cas sat down on the edge of his desk. He watched Dean’s discomfort in silence. Dean wouldn’t forget the question. Cas had no intention of asking twice. After a couple of minutes, Dean lowered his chin and tilted his head to check his Top’s position. Cas hissed at him, and Dean faced front again. A slow blush crept up Dean’s neck and tinged his ears red.

“Yessir,” Dean finally mumbled into the corner.

“I beg your pardon?” Cas asked.

“Yes, sir, I’m Primary.” Dean kicked at the carpet.

“Thank you, Dean. Then may I ask why you’re slow to show me the appropriate respect for the weight of this moment? You broke a Pack rule. Twice.”

Dean lowered his chin to his chest and sulked. Cas could tell he was pouting.

“Very well. It appears you need time to think. Stay here. Do not move from that corner. I will return after dinner, and we’ll try again.” Cas left him with two stark pops to his ass that surprised Dean enough to make him gasp and rise to tiptoe. It was a perfect mimic of the swats Alpha had given their daughter, but much different in form and power. Dean’s ass reddened.

“Papa!” They chorused together as he returned to the patio next to the sparkling pool. Cas smiled warmly. He could feel his blood beginning to heat and pool south as his semi-annual Rut approached. He could feel his nerve-endings tingle. Rut was imminent, and it set his belly queasy. He had very little appetite. He could scent each Omega’s distinctive bouquet separately. But the table set with Tony’s cooking and his Pack all in their places was a welcome, beckoning sight. Cas took his place at the head of the table. Dean’s spot was empty. And Michael’s. Kali was working long hours. Sarah scurried out on Castiel’s heels, apologizing as she slipped into her chair. Cas checked his watch and then met her eye with a stern nonverbal reprimand. She nodded, chastised. Cas let it be. Everyone else was in place and smiling. Sam and Cain had slipped in in Castiel’s absence, their stature enough to calm the family chaos somewhat without either of them needing a heavy hand. Castiel nodded to them both, imbuing his expression with gratitude. 

“Where’s Daddy?” Alex asked, craning his neck to watch the door.

“Daddy won’t be eating with us, Ace. He’s standing in the corner for me.” Cas unfolded his napkin and set it in his lap.

“’Cause he said a grownup word?” Alex pressed.

“Because he broke my rule and then argued with me about his punishment. He needs some thinking time.”

“Unca Dean’s in timeout?” Hank asked.

“That’s right,” Cas replied. “It’s a timeout.” He helped himself to a chicken breast from the center platter.

“Didja spank Daddy, Papa?” Alex wanted to know. “He was bad, right?”

“He isn’t bad, Ace,” Cas replied calmly. “He broke a rule, and he needs to be held accountable. Let’s have our dinner now, please, and talk about pleasant things. Tell me about swimming today. Did you make it all the way across the pool by yourself?”

Alex took the lead, waving his fork enthusiastically as he and Hank argued about who swam farthest unaided, and the rest of the pups contributed commentary. The pups occupied their own seats, assigned by Cas with careful consideration as to placement and temperament such that each child had one adult looking after them and Kate was usually free to fetch things or help the rest of them, or, as Cas hoped most frequently, to eat one meal a day in peace. Whether they dined in the kitchen, the formal dining room, or outdoors on the patio, their places were set by more than habit. Castiel liked order, and that meant assigned seats. But with Michael and Dean both missing, Kate shifted to Michael’s place so she could fill Kat’s plate and see to the pup’s feeding. Cas nodded his silent thanks. Conversations died as the Pack settled in to eat. Swimming stoked appetites and gathering stoked a sense of wellbeing that even the Primate could feel.

“I looked in on Fred today,” Sarah told the table during a pause in the pups’ ebullience. “He’s on the mend. Tony sent some comfort food over for him.”

“Yes, I spoke to him this morning,” Cas replied. “I told him to take the rest of the week to recover. With the Andersons arriving tomorrow and Fred out sick, I ask those of you who can lend a hand to help with our Pack’s hospitality while we have guests. You can expect to be asked to cover some of the household duties as needed.” Castiel’s formality triggered Gabe to launch a dinner roll at his head, but Cas caught it mid-air and tore it in half before spreading butter on it and handing half to April. “Gabriel, you win the chore of stocking the Guest House pantry and refrigerator. Do not throw food at my table. Children, do not emulate Uncle Gabriel. He is no role-model. Jimmy, eat your green beans. Sam, please don’t leave this evening without discussing your mate’s bruises with me. She has a court appearance tomorrow, and as a representative of the ACRI, she is expected to make a positive impression on the court, not limp about like a paddled child.”

Sam replied with a polite affirmative. Gabe caught Sarah’s eye from catty-corner across the long table and the two of them failed at stifling their laughter.

“Is something funny?” Cas challenged the ape to his left.

“No, sir,” Sarah said in between giggles. “It’s just…”

“You turn a little bit rigid when you’re coming up on your Rut, bro. That’s all,” Gabe explained. “Lighten up, Cas. It’s just dinner. We’re not going to wander off into traffic without you watching over all of us.”

“I’m being unreasonable?” Cas asked, setting his utensils down.

“Little bit, yeah,” Gabe replied bravely.

“Too controlling?”

“We can figure out for ourselves when the paper towel roll needs replacing.” Gabe ignored the sizzle of tension. He scooped a forkful of scalloped potatoes into his mouth. “Loosen up a little, man. Go fuck your husband and work the tension out as nature intended.” Gabe talking with his mouth full was obscene and obviously provocative. And that word…

The pups gasped and giggled; casting looks between the men who sat separated by the length of the table. Castiel’s chair grated loudly across the flagstones as he shoved it back. “Leave my table, Gabriel Allen. I will deal with you when I get around to it. Wait for me in the library.”

Gabe shared a look with Sarah and then sniffled loudly and rolled slowly to his feet.

“Wait,” Cas stalled him at the door. “Apologize to the children for your language and your terrible manners. They deserve a better model from you, Gabriel. You’re the oldest member of this Pack. You have a responsibility to set an example.”

“Really, C.J.? How about you take your role-modeling and you shove it up your tight, rigid asshole. Fuck you.”

_"Gabriel!”_

Gabe winked at Hank. “Yeah, sorry, kids. Don’t grow up like your Uncle Gabriel. Your backsides will hurt a lot. Don’t talk like me either. Alpha hates my words.”

“Just go,” Cas snarled.

“Jesus, Gabe,” Sam muttered, pointing Hank back toward his plate. All the pups were wide-eyed and awed. Little eyes glanced back and forth between the Alpha and his brother as lightning bolts shot from the brothers’ eyes. Gabe smacked the doorframe a couple of times as he let himself in.

Castiel closed his eyes and gripped the back of his wrought iron chair. He breathed mindfully and chanted _'Rama’_ to himself in his head over and over. 

“Go on, Alpha,” Sam told him quietly. “We’re fine. We’ll see the pups through dinner and get them bathed. Don’t worry about us. Go take care of our brothers.”

Cas’ jaw twitched as he opened his eyes. 

“Is it a full moon tonight?” wondered Jess. “What got into those two?”

“Papa?”

Cas sighed. “It’s all right, Emma. Eat your supper. Uncle Gabe isn’t feeling like himself right now. I’m going to help him feel better.” Cas left with a gentle smile for his pups. 

“Everybody saying naughty words!” J.T. proclaimed, shaking his head and shoveling in another huge bite. 

“All right,” Cain agreed. “Show’s over. I believe Tony made a pie for little wolves who eat their vegetables. Everyone turn back to your plates and finish dinner. Kat, turn around and face the table, please.”

“Papa’s mad,” she told Cain.

“He has a job to do, so he’s gone to do it. You have a job to do too, little girl. Eat.” Cain glanced at April, the sole remaining parent of the Alpha’s foursome. He felt he might have overstepped. But April looked shaken herself, and she was distracted trying to refocus Jimmy toward his plate. Her hand shook. Cain reached across Alex and Jimmy to rest a warm hand against the back of her neck, and she leaned into it.

Cas stalked past his office door, choosing to confront his brother first. Gabriel leaned precariously back in one of the wooden chairs at the reading table with his feet up on the shiny surface, ankles crossed. It was iconic Gabe, a dare and a statement both. Cas knocked his feet off without slowing, and he dragged an overbalanced Gabriel to his feet as he barreled past, bringing the Omega with him. Cas pressed his brother into the back wall and crowded into him, their faces centimeters apart.

“You think it’s funny, Omega? Keep laughing. I have no patience for your bullshit today. Strip everything off and get on your knees.”

“Ooh. Kinky,” Gabe quipped, but his eyes shot wide when Castiel’s full-armed slap landed across his cheek. Gabriel gaped at his brother, speechless, a hand touching his burning cheek.

“Naked, Gabriel. On your knees.”

“If you D.F. me,” Gabe warned his Alpha, “what will you have left in the tank for Dean?”

“You let me worry about my refractory time, Omega,” Castiel growled back, menacing. 

Gabe stripped his t-shirt over his head and shoved off the jeans that he’d only donned because his brother insisted on clothes at the dinner table. He stepped out of them and kicked them clear with a bare foot. Cas stepped back, offering him room to kneel. Gabriel held the Alpha’s eyes as he lowered to his knees and dropped forward to all fours.

“Face the wall.”

Gabe snorted, but he shuffled around, turning his backside toward his brother.

Cas snarled as he smacked Gabriel’s ass. Hard. Gabriel grunted and rocked forward. Then he grimaced, his jaw set stubbornly, and he leaned back to goad Cas for more. Castiel stood beside Gabe pressing the side of his leg against Gabriel’s hip, holding his opposite hip firmly with his left hand bracing him, cinching him in, and he rained fire down on Gabe’s ass. Gabriel slipped downward onto his elbows and tucked his ass under. Castiel wasted no time setting his butt burning, and then he dropped onto his knees between Gabe’s feet, shoved his robe out of the way, pulled his cock free, and rocked forward into his brother’s channel, sheathing himself in one hard thrust.

Gabriel ducked his head and shouted, but Cas had hold of his hips, tugging the Omega backward into him, holding him tight. Like a dog, Castiel fucked him ruthlessly. Gabe’s breathing caught and hitched, punched out of him. He buckled forward, head striking the wall until Castiel regripped his hips and jerked him backward. It took no time at all until the Alpha rolled down to cover his brother and spilled into his channel with a huff and a metaphysical shotgun blast that curled Gabriel’s toes.

“Alpha, please,” he whispered with his cheek planted against hardwood.

“Apologize, Omega!”

“I’m so sorry. Please, little brother!”

“I don’t need this shit from you, Gabriel.”

“Please,” Gabe moaned, aching, stinging, burning. He worked shaking hands beneath him and pressed his torso off the floor. “Alpha, please!”

Cas pulled out of his brother and sat back on his heels. “Straighten up, and we won’t revisit this. Do it again, and I will turn my wolf loose on your ass while I’m in full Rut. Now. Go back out there and ask every Pack member who stands above you in rank to spank you, and then retire to your room. You’re confined for the rest of the evening. When Kali gets home, you’re to explain what happened this evening and ask her to put the finishing touches on your punishment. Grab your clothes and go, Gabriel. 

Gabe used the wall to help him stand, wiping his cheeks and nose with a hand. His face showed a somber castigation but no remorse. Not yet. By the time he sobbed himself to sleep, remorse would come. Gone was the twinkle in his eyes that torqued Castiel to seeing red. Castiel’s Claim tingled under both their skins, setting Gabe’s ass and channel to throbbing. Cas tugged on it, pulling Gabriel’s gaze up to look into Castiel’s red-rimmed eyes.

“I expect you to take the lead on hospitality while the Andersons are here, Gabriel. I will take you at your word that you don’t need any guidance from me to know what needs doing. If anything is out of place in Fred’s absence, I’m holding you responsible. Until we get our butler back, you’re the butler. Am I clear?”

Gabe pouted for a moment, but Cas was rock solid and unwavering. Gabe swallowed. The Alpha’s reaction to his Omega brother was only overkill to someone who couldn’t sense or scent Gabriel’s need. As the man hesitated, Castiel stepped closer and wrapped a hand around the back of his brother’s neck, pulling him closer. He searched Gabe’s face and sent a beseeching tendril of inquiry into his psyche through their refreshed bond. Gabe gasped softly.

“Clear, Alpha,” he admitted. Cas nodded, squeezed his neck for a moment, and then turned to go, tying his robe closed. “Sir? Do I need to ask for swats from Dean and Michael? They weren’t there to witness my smart mouth.”

“Do they stand above you in rank?” Cas asked back.

Gabe’s shoulders slumped. He dropped his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“All right, then,” Cas concluded. “I don’t take kindly to blatant disrespect, Gabriel Allen, especially from Omegas. This is a punishment, and a reminder, and a status re-set. Go on now. I’ll see you in the morning to go over the duties you assign yourself or plan to delegate.”

Gabe leaned over and collected his clothing from the floor.

“And Gabe? I love you.”

Gabriel chewed his lower lip for a moment and then graced his brother with one of his rare, unmasked expressions, full of the raw trauma of too many hard years, and he nodded. “Love you too, Sir. Tha…thanks, Cas.”

Cas felt a sudden exigence in his gut, unrelated to Gabriel, through his bond-link with Dean, and his head whipped around. “Go on back to the dinner table, Gabe. Get yourself sorted. I need to see to Dean.”

As Cas opened the library door, the sound of scuffling bodies and the hitched breaths of a grappling match was audible before he rounded the door to see Sam trying his damnedest to shove Dean back into Castiel’s office. Cas strode forward, reaching the two of them just as Dean won a free arm and the leverage to haul back and take a vicious swing at his brother’s jaw. Cas caught his fist in a palm and halted the punch cold.

“What the hell is going on here?” Castiel demanded as Sam let Dean go and stepped back with a hand to his own face. Clearly, Cas hadn’t made it in time to stop every blow.

“He came out into the foyer bellowing for you, Sir,” Sam explained. “I told him to go back where he’d been placed and wait until you released him. He didn’t like that.” Sam shot a sour look over Cas’ shoulder at Dean, fuming in the office, still nude.

“You said you’d be back after dinner, Castiel!” Dean accused. “Where were you?”

“It’s after dinner now, Dean. I am here. Back to your corner, please.”

“You _left_ me, Cas! For hours!”

“It hasn’t been hours, Dean. I needed to deal with Gabriel.”

“You expect me to stand in here sweating bullets while you soak yourself in Omega _stink?”_ Dean was shaking with rage.

“I _expect_ you to trust me and do as you’re _told_, Submissive!” Castiel roared back. Dean snarled, swiped his hand across Castiel’s desk to send papers flying, and then disappeared around the door jamb and back to his place.

“Are you hurt?” Cas asked Sam. He stepped up and peered into Sam’s left eye, touching the swelling at his cheek carefully.

“It’s not bad. I’ve had worse from him. He’s always had a helluva mean right hook. Dad taught him that back when we expected him to Present Omega. Alpha strength and a brat’s need to tantrum has only made it more intense.” Sam hissed as Castiel’s thumb passed over the apple of his cheekbone.

“Get some ice on it and take a dose of Tylenol.” 

Gabriel slinked past the two Dominants on his way out to the back patio. Cas watched him go. “Sam, I’ve assigned Gabriel a full Pack roundabout. Don’t let anyone half-ass it, please. He needs to feel every member of this Pack staking their rightful place over him.”

“Oh. Wow. Okay. Yeah, sure, Alpha. It’s been a while since we did one of those. Any stipulations?” 

From inside the office, Dean called, “Any minute now, fellas! Clock’s ticking!”

“Keep pushing me, Pet, and you can stand in there all night!” Cas called back. “Sam, I’d prefer the pups witness at least part of it. They saw Gabe act out. They need to see – and smell – what his resolution looks like.”

“Sure thing, sir. And…Michael?”

“Yes, Michael needs to participate as well. Everyone but Kate and April. And Sam? If Sarah wants to give it a shot, she has my permission. It’ll be her decision. Gabe still needs to ask her.”

“All right. Don’t worry about a thing, Cas. We’ll take care of your brother.”

“Send Michael to the billiard room when he gets through with Gabe tonight. We’re staying up late.”

“Yeah. Course. I’ll make sure he gets the message. We’re good out here, sir. Don’t worry about us.” Sam winced as his cheek throbbed, and he turned and strolled across the foyer in search of an ice pack. Cas closed his office door behind him. Dean was in his corner, but he was crowded tight into it, resting his forehead against the paneling, beating a syncopated rhythm against his thigh with his thumb and pinky splayed like drumsticks. Cas could hear beatboxing sounds even though he couldn’t see Dean’s mouth.

“What’s going on, Dean?” he asked.

Dean turned from the waist to look over his shoulder. “Who, me? You finally getting around to me?”

“Yes, I am. And I asked you a question.” Cas rotated his desk chair to face the corner and sat down, knees wide, fingertips steepled under his chin, assessing variables.

“I dunno, Alpha. You tell me. You’re the one with the agenda. What’s going on? I thought maybe you forgot I was in here starving.” Dean rolled his eyes and faced his corner again. He shuffled his feet until his position was textbook instead of provocative. He laced his fingers behind his head and touched elbows to the walls, letting his elbows and feet be his only touchpoints as per long established rules. Cas allowed him to stand that way for a couple of moments before breaking the uneasy silence.

“Come here and kneel for me, please, Pet.”

Dean moved with the grace characteristic of his wolf, a tell Cas needed to be certain of his mindset. He knelt smoothly, knees spread, shoulders relaxed, eyes glittering with a sense of injustice. He set his palms on his thighs without tension. His jaw was loose. It was only his eyes that betrayed his state of mind outwardly, and Cas was glad he’d turned the man around.

“You’ve waited on me far longer than this before,” Cas reminded his husband. “You can stand in a corner all day if I want you to. Talk to me, Pet.”

“During a scene, Alpha, sure, but not for this. Not for a punishment. Not when it’s Pack discipline bullshit.”

Cas tried for a moment to stay level, but his wolf broke in on him, and he snarled. “Whether it’s punishment _bullshit_, Pet, or any other instruction from me, I expect the obedience from you that you swore to give me! This is not a game to me. You not only broke Pack rules, but you also questioned my authority in front of the whole Pack. We agreed that we would discuss disagreements about policy in _private_. If you had something to say about Rule number eight before now, you’ve had ample time to bring it up! And if I put you in the corner and tell you to wait, you _wait,_ goddamnit! I don’t care if it’s a planned scene, an improvised scene, a punishment, or just a fucking whim of mine. You _obey me_ when I tell you to do something because I am your Top, your Alpha, your Dominant, and your boss, and you _agreed_ to submit to me, Dean Michael!”

Dean glared back in petulant rebellious fury.

Cas cocked his head, reading the energy coming from his husband. “You struck your brother for no good reason. That’s Rule three.”

Dean had nothing to say. Cas continued to study him. He narrowed his eyes. Dean’s chest heaved as he fought to hold his position against the outrage in his belly.

“You’ve been having nightmares this week, haven’t you?” Cas guessed. Dean flicked his eyes away instantly. “Dean? Don’t lie to me. You’re in enough hot water as it is.”

Dean mumbled inaudibly.

“Speak up, Submissive.”

“I said they started two weeks ago!” Dean’s eyes reddened angrily.

“Shutter that alpha when you talk to me, boy!” Castiel reprimanded sharply, and Dean’s eyes returned to green instantly. Dean slid back in his posture until he was sitting on his butt, and he crossed his legs Omega-style in front of him. All the fight drained out, leaving him weary and sad.

He scratched a dark divot in the patterned rug and then smoothed it out again to lie flat with the grain of the fabric. He repeated the motion, dragging his nails through the weave again and again, staring at his fingertips.

“You’ve kenneled your wolf so he won’t throw a fit when he falls,” Cas accused, more a guess than anything else. “You’re stifling yourself and living in your front brain.”

“Won’t stop it for long,” Dean grumbled. “But I thought maybe I could get us right up to the brink with my front brain and then let the wolf in for the fire. Thought that might fulfill the pattern without hurting my family for once.”

“You almost broke Sam’s cheekbone,” Cas pointed out.

“Sammy knows better than to try to manhandle me,” Dean said darkly. “He never wins that battle. Never has, never will.”

“Dean, the point is, you hid this from me, and you tried an untested solution without allowing me to help you figure it out. Have you told Michael your nightmare is back?” Cas leaned forward in his chair.

“Dude, Michael knows everything that goes on in my head. I can’t sneeze without him saying Bless You ten seconds before it happens.”

“I want to try something new,” Cas said, bracing his hands on his thighs to stand up. “Come with me.”

“What? Where?” Dean stumbled to his feet and then stuttered backward when Cas turned back to confront him angrily.

“I’ve had enough of that, Pet. Follow instructions and do it without commentary or I will gag you.” Castiel spun on his heel and marched out into the foyer without waiting for Dean to find his balance. He disappeared around the back hallway and stormed down the wide passage. Dean scurried to catch up but only caught sight of his Alpha’s heel disappearing into the gameroom on the right, the one with the pool table in it.

“No ceiling anchors in here, Sir,” he observed, trying to work out what his Sir had in mind. “No spanking benches either. I guess the pool table could serve…”

“What part of ‘shut your mouth’ is confusing to you, Dean?” Cas asked rhetorically. The Alpha fumbled about behind the wooden bar and clicked open a storage closet that Dean hadn’t known was there. It was deep, set into the space between the gameroom and the back of Michael’s office.

“Huh,” Dean said eloquently, watching with interest as Cas extracted a portable bondage bench and set it before the sofa by the back wall. “Didn’t know that was there. What else you got in there?”

Cas smirked. “You’re a handful when you’re pushing, Pet. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of you tonight. You and April, both. No point heading into a Rut without letting off some steam.”

“April? What’s she got to do with this?”

“The bench is not for you, Dean. It’s for my Kitten who’s been diligently working on her orgasm-control. Go and fetch her for me, would you?”

Dean hesitated, eyeing the wooden frame as Cas turned it a few degrees at a time, pausing to check the angle and height, readjusting from different spots. It wasn’t a typical spanking bench, although it would work for that. It looked like it could be used for breeding or torture or nearly anything as it was a bare form with little structure, allowing direct contact from any direction.

“Scoot, Pet. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Yessir,” Dean mumbled, more curious than worried. He scuttled out, following his weak bond-link toward April, taking the stairs two at a time until he found her with Jess bathing all six pups at once in the nursery’s bathroom. “Alpha wants us both for a … thing, Kid.”

April looked up with wide blue eyes. “Tonight?”

“Right now.”

“Um. All right.” Dean could scent her body react to the news, and this close to Heat, she smelled otherworldly tempting. His alpha keyed in on the eroticism of Omega-in-Heat, but he clamped down on it. “Give me a minute to get someone up here to help Jess, and I’ll be right there.”

“Gameroom downstairs,” he told her. “Make it quick.”

“No. Dean!” Jess called out into the nursery as he left. “Gabe needs you to spank him.”

“What, now?” Dean asked impatiently.

“Go down and give him your swats. He’s on a Pack roundabout. If you’re scening with Cas tonight, you’re not going to get a better chance than right now. Send Sarah up to spell April. Take care of Gabe. Then you’re both free for the rest of the night. We’ll get your pups to bed.”

“What the fu… heck did Gabe do?”

“Pretty much the same thing you did. Cas set him a roundabout as punishment. He needs all of us to step up.” Jess dodged a splash and went back in with a washcloth to scrub Jimmy’s face.

“Dangit! All right. Fine. Kid, get your butt down to the pool room as soon as you can.”

Dean hustled down, taking the back stairs that let out near the patio door. The patio was empty but for Eunice and Tony clearing the table.

“Parlor, alpha,” Eunice told him before he could ask.

“Thanks,” he mumbled and backtracked. Dean walked in on a miasma of hot Omega scent. Gabe was red-faced and crying, but he had an Omega’s fortitude holding his back straight. As Dean walked in, Gabe took a deep breath and then bent himself over one of the barstools from the kitchen island, holding on to the lower rungs. Sarah had a number five paddle in her hands. She set her feet a measured distance from Gabe’s position, turned them to a carefully practiced angle, and tested her swing a couple of times with the paddle centered high on his backside.

“Little lower,” Dean and Sam said at the same time. Sarah adjusted. Dean caught Sam’s eye, noticed the angry bruise peeking around the ice pack he held to his cheek and then looked away. Sarah delivered ten perfectly adequate swats to Gabe’s fiery red ass. She helped him stand and wiped his eyes with a tissue and set the paddle on an end table. She gave him a perfunctory hug, awkward with Gabriel’s lack of reciprocity.

“Who’s next?” Sarah asked, blushing as she let him go.

“That would be me,” Dean spoke up. “Need you to go relieve April upstairs for baths and bedtime. Alpha wants her with him.”

Sarah nodded and left without a word, clearly off-balance at having rendered her first Pack discipline and glad to have the excuse to leave.

“I’ll go with her,” Cain volunteered. “Bedtime for six is going to take more than two people.” In the foyer, Cain caught up to Sarah and put an arm over her shoulder. If Dean had to guess, he was congratulating her on taking a tough step toward full assimilation and doing it well.

Gabe huffed a tired sigh and presented Dean with the paddle. “Alpha, would you please discipline me for transgressions to the Pack?”

“Sure,” Dean replied, taking the paddle formally but then discarding it onto the tea table. “Over my lap, Omega. Looks like you could use some skin-to-skin right about now.” Dean sat in the middle of the couch and pulled Gabriel across his left leg, letting Gabe brace on the couch at a good supportive angle. “What’d you do, anyway?”

“Called my brother rigid,” Gabe said over his shoulder.

“The dude’s lost all sense of humor tonight,” Dean quipped back. He followed that comment with a hard smack to the back of Gabe’s left thigh. The Omega grunted and ducked his head into the sofa cushion. Gabe’s ass was beet-red, but his thighs were yet relatively unscathed. Dean altered that, bringing heat enough to spread the flush of pain down both legs to meld with the hue up higher. The musky scent of Alpha wasn’t subtle with Gabe’s backside naked and upturned. Cas was never subtle when he decided statements needed to be made. 

Dean’s bare hand on Gabriel’s legs cemented them as Pack, firming the Claim-bond they shared, and mingling their scents as they both broke into a sweat. Unlike Sarah, Dean’s application of strikes was no classroom training praxis. Dean understood both instinctively and academically what the purpose of a roundabout was, and he knew he needed to get underneath the surface level of emotion to fulfill the ritual.

He knew when he’d reached the end in the same way a wild animal knows when its thirst is slaked from a cool mountain stream. He just knew. Wordlessly he hauled Gabe up to straddle his lap and chuckled as he embraced the man. Irony is a bitch, Dean thought.

“Glad you’re having fun,” Gabe grumbled.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see who limps harder in the morning,” Dean replied. He kissed Gabe’s temple and let the Omega work his way to his feet. “Night, folks,” Dean added on his way out. “Don’t wait up.”

“Dean…” Sam stepped forward with his hand half-raised.

Dean fled with a “Later, Sammy,” over his shoulder.

When Dean slipped into the gameroom, April was already naked on the oddly-shaped structure, cuffed down on her hands and knees with support for her torso of a long sloped beam that kept her head high and her hips low. Cas straightened up from kissing her. He wiped his lower lip with a thumb and eyed Dean, still naked, appreciatively. “Ah, Pet. Good timing. On your knees facing the couch, please. I expect complete obedience from you tonight.”

Dean eyed the Ozzie on the rack cautiously, but he did as bid. He folded onto the floor with his back to April, and he rolled his shoulders until he found his headspace and settled.

“As you know,” Cas said, strolling closer. “You are in hot water with me for breaking several of my rules, a situation that you incurred deliberately in an effort to…how shall we say? …unleash my fury and win you a chance to break your fall? It’s not going to go that way, Pet. Instead of taking you out to the woodshed this time, I’m going to take you somewhere entirely different. I have no idea if this will help at all, but it’s worth a try. Are you with me?”

Dean blinked up at his Dom in confusion as Cas came level with him.

“Dean, I’m asking for your consent to scene in response to tonight’s tantrum instead of applying the switching you would normally be getting right now.” Cas had himself reined in, but Dean could tell his approaching Rut was fueling the heat of his blood and his imagination.

Dean glanced over his shoulder where April knelt bound to the bench. She looked at him placidly, her eyes already hazy with warm sensation.

“April is not going anywhere, Pet,” Cas added. “No one is going to touch her.” The Alpha turned his head to follow Dean’s gaze. “And she _won’t_ be touching herself either. Her role here tonight is part of her ongoing training in self-control. She is an observer to our play. Nothing more.”

“Si…Sir,” Dean choked out. “How is it self-control if she’s cuffed?”

“Hmm,” Cas pondered. “Good point.” Dean saw April shake her head desperately as Cas approached her again. Dean had a sinking feeling. The bastard had meant to add another piece to the structure all along. Cas disappeared behind the bar again and emerged from the closet with a shoebox. He set it on the bar and pulled out a carton of triple-A batteries and a wand vibrator. Cas loaded batteries into the compartment the way John Winchester taught Dean to load a pistol, with care and precision. Twisting the endcap into place, the Alpha turned it on, turned it all the way to max, and carried it slowly toward his mate. She squeaked and pulled at her restraints.

“Shhh. Calm yourself, Kitten. No one’s going to hurt you. I’m not even going to touch you. I’ll just leave this here.” Cas set the vibrator into a clamp below April’s crotch, and he tightened the screws. The support bar ended with a wide brace across her hips, but had she wanted, a mere shift of the angle of her hips would have brought her into delicious contact with the vibrator. Dean’s eyes were as wide as April’s. Self-control would be an agony this close to her Heat.

“There we are. That’s better.” Cas trailed a hand through her hair, stringy and unkempt at the moment. “This is training, after all. Thank Dean for looking out for you, Kitten. We wouldn’t want to rob you of the chance to practice.”

“Thank you, alpha,” April whimpered.

Dean groaned and turned back around to face the couch. The buzz of the vibrator set his teeth on edge. Poor kid. “You’re a sadist,” Dean told Castiel.

Cas laughed. “She’s quite comfortable up there, Pet. I tested it myself. Her weight is evenly distributed, and neither her wrists nor her knees are taking undue pressure. It’s a nicely constructed piece of furniture, isn’t it, Kitten?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said bravely.

“Good girl. April, love, your rule is simple. If you come tonight, I will give you every punishment that Dean earned for himself. He broke Rules one, three, five, seven, and eight. It’s quite a list. And I know this will challenge you to an extreme, but I believe in you, sweetheart. You can do this. All your training has led up to this test, and you’re ready.”

“I’ll try my best, Sir.” The kid was sweating already. Her knuckles were white on the handles she gripped. Dean guessed she could hold out for twenty minutes, tops. “And if I succeed?”

Cas laughed. “When you succeed, as I expect you will, I will kiss you goodnight and put you to bed with your hands bound to your bedpost so you won’t be tempted to defy me in the middle of the night. Am I not good to you, my love?”

“And me, Sir?” Dean asked.

“Easy, Pet. All you have to do is please me. I’m not going to ask much of you. No pain. No restrictions. Enjoy yourself. Come as many times as you like. Release your wolf and wallow in pleasure with me. Do whatever feels good; whatever I ask of you.”

April whined behind him.

“Sir, how does this address my fall?”

“One thing we’ve never tried when your brats take you to the darkest depths is the opposite of cold rejection and punishment.” Cas was naked by the time he mosied back into Dean’s field of vision. He settled right in front of Dean on the couch and beckoned his husband forward. “We’ve never tried drenching you with affection and acceptance. We’ve never put your brat to a task it could satisfactorily complete.” Cas wrapped his arms around Dean when the man knee-walked forward to kneel between his feet. “Your wolf expects pain and distance from me. Let’s see what happens if he performs to his best abilities and incurs my approval instead of my wrath.”

“But, Alpha,” Dean said, closing his eyes as tender fingers carded through his hair. “I broke rules. Lots of them.”

“Oh, I won’t forget. We’ll deal with that. Perhaps I’ll assign you lines or extra household chores. For now though. Kiss me, Pet.”

Dean lifted up high on his knees and sank into the warmth of Castiel’s chest, raising his face to be kissed. Cas bent down and pressed their lips together. He reached downward with his left arm and hoisted Dean up to straddle his lap as his tongue plunged into Dean’s mouth. Dean let him control the kiss, let him take hold of Dean’s face and angle it how he wanted. Let strong hands dig hard holds into his thighs.

“Hands behind your back, Submissive,” Cas whispered. Dean let go of his Alpha’s arms and took his left wrist in his right hand behind his back. Castiel spread his knees, widening Dean’s too. Cas braced him and kissed down his throat to his clavicle, nibbling and licking as he went.

“Chest out,” Cas instructed, and Dean arched his back, no longer fighting a rebellious nature, softened into dutiful compliance, willful passivity. Whatever Castiel wanted, Dean would give it. Cas’ front teeth teased his left nipple until it stood out proudly, earning warm wet licks across the firm bud. Then he repeated the strokes on the right side. Cas dug his fingernails into Dean’s hips, rolling them into a smooth gyration. Dean picked up the rhythm, planting his knees in the couch on either side of Cas’ hips. Cas heaved him closer, bringing their groins into convergence and rising again to kiss Dean deeply.

Behind them, the vibrator buzzed, and April groaned, watching.

Cas reached around and pulled Dean in with handfuls of ass, putting off Rut pheromones that made Dean’s head spin. Dean rolled his hips.

“You’re beautiful, Pet. So good for me.” Cas broke his kiss to praise his Sub only to dive back in and kiss him again, deeper and wetter, more desperate.

They made out until Dean lost track of time, the contact at his groin insufficient to get either of them off. Cas pulled Dean’s head closer to his scent glands, and he attacked Dean’s earlobe as Dean buried his nose in Cas’ throat, snuffling for the scent of Rut. “Down on your knees, Pet,” Cas told him. “Take me in your mouth and make it good for me.”

“Yessir.” Dean kept his hands tightly clasped behind his back and eased backward onto the floor. Cas filled Dean’s mouth as Dean looked upward through his lashes at his Dom’s face. Cas looked transformed by want and lust, and Dean flushed thinking about how he was the one bringing that look to the man’s face.

“Up on your hands and knees, Dean. Put your whole body into it. Make it good. Show me you want to please me.” Cas moaned as Dean lifted up and began rocking forward, burying his face as far into Cas’ crotch as he could sink. April panted in alarm behind him, turned on by the show; sorely tempted to do something about it.

The door creaked a little as Michael entered, still in his work scrubs. “That’s a pretty picture,” he observed, closing the door behind him. “Sam said you wanted me?”

“Michael…” Castiel’s voice grated with his arousal, like crazed glass. He snaked his fingers into Dean’s short hair, caught enough of it between his fingers to give him leverage, and pulled Dean down onto his length until Dean had to open his throat and concentrate on suppressing his gag reflex. “Have you dealt with Gabriel?”

“Yes, Alpha. We just put him to bed. Kali has him. He’s finished his roundabout.”

“Have you eaten?” 

Dean tuned them out. Their conversation had nothing to do with his task, and it was distracting. He held his breath and counted beats in his head, trusting that Cas would allow him to breathe before he reached tunnel vision.

“Tony fixed me a plate, Sir. I’m good.”

“How was work?” Cas tried to compartmentalize, but Dean’s tongue flicked up his cock, and he ended his question on a groan that April mimicked.

“We had a close call tonight,” Michael told him. He settled onto the couch beside Cas and watched Dean work. Cas let go of Dean’s head, letting him suck in a few breaths and swallow the excess slobber in his mouth before drawing him back in. “Social services pulled an Ozzie outta his foster home. Kid was running a temperature of 106 and out of his mind in Omesol poisoning. Nowhere near his Heat. I’m not sure we got to him in time, but we did what we could. He fought us like a wild animal.”

“Who’s on call tonight?” Cas asked with little pulsing drives of his hips and a hand cradling Dean’s jaw.

“Dr. Harvelle has him. She’s going to sit up with him all night and watch him. Alpha, that was the worst I’ve ever seen in the flesh. He was completely out of it. We couldn’t sedate him until we got alpha spunk in him. Had to pin him down. It was awful.” Michael fell silent and watched Dean. He glanced up at April. “What are we doing tonight, Sir?”

Cas moaned and filled Michael in.

Michael got up and walked over to the bench. “You’re doing great, Pete. You’ve got this.” He kissed her on the lips and brushed hair out of her face.

“Michael, please,” she begged.

“Can’t help you, sweetheart. You have to do this on your own. I know you can. Hang in there and concentrate.” Michael gave her one more kiss and then turned back to the two men a couple of yards away. “Would you mind if I joined in, Sir? Two Doms better than one?” Michael pulled his top over his head, already reading the room well enough. Whatever Cas had in mind when he brought Michael in with Castiel’s toys, Michael wouldn’t be needing his shirt.

“Help yourself, Michael,” Cas replied. “Follow my lead if there’s a question, please. But other than that, he’s our buffet.”

“I love a buffet,” Michael said. He dropped to his knees behind his mate and buried his face in Dean’s ass, licking deep, licking long, licking wet. Dean bucked in surprise at first but quickly settled, closing his eyes.

“Eyes, Pet,” Cas reminded him. “Your rules don’t change just because your mate’s in your ass.”

Dean whimpered but complied. He prayed his Alpha could hold him steady against the onslaught from behind, and he clung to Castiel’s eyes like a lifeline. Cas’ eyes smiled back at him affectionately as his hips rolled slowly. Dean was close to lifting emotionally and floating away, but there was a weight around his neck pinning him to the ground. Remorse. Guilt. He didn’t deserve to feel this good. He didn’t deserve to be taken care of between the two men he loved most dearly in the world, not after the tantrum he threw. He certainly didn’t deserve to feel this good while the Ozzie who’d done nothing wrong looked on in frustrated agony.

Michael’s teeth nipped at his rim lightly as he pulled Dean’s hips back into his face. Dean gasped around his mouthful, still clinging desperately to Castiel’s blue, blue eyes. Dean’s feet and palms were sweating.

“Be good for me, Pet,” Cas crooned. “Show me. Show me you’re sorry for what you said, what you did, what you tried to do. Show me, Dean.”

Dean’s eyes welled mutinously. Damnit, he wasn’t going to cry over a blowjob, for fuck’s sake. Something about Cas’ intense stare was breaking through Dean’s defenses though. He felt weightless. He felt vulnerable, like a kitten in a tornado. He felt entirely at the mercy of the man with his cock in Dean’s mouth, and Dean…Dean wanted to feel this way. He focused his efforts and dug in hard to make it good.

Cas sometimes traded with Michael at breakfast, taking Dean in hand beneath the kitchen table instead of April and allowing the Ozzie to snuggle with her beau in a chair they shared. They didn’t do that often as April usually needed the grounding of a morning, and Michael couldn’t give her that. But now and then, especially on weekends when their schedules were a little freer, Cas let Dean fold up between his knees and rock softly with his mouth full of a far more substantial meal than Tony’s scrambled eggs.

This wasn’t that. Mornings were about self-control for both of them. Tonight was about the opposite. Cas was determined to drive Dean out of his mind, goading him until the Sub admitted he had nothing on Castiel’s willpower and gave over to Alpha’s control entirely. Right now, Dean was working hard, using his own control to guide his movements. For now, Cas allowed that. It would be a progression. Holding Dean’s eyes with his own communicated everything he needed to say.

Behind them, the timbre of the buzzing vibrator changed as April touched it against soft folds, grinding down to take the edge off. She sobbed and lifted free again without gaining any traction. Cas didn’t glance at her, but his eyes registered amusement and approval in equal measure.

Dean’s cock spurted a few stringy drops of precome onto the carpet. He moaned around the cock in his mouth and then sank deeply onto it, opening his throat, swallowing around the head.

Michael worked Dean’s asshole over with his tongue until his tongue went numb. Languorously, Michael eased his body up over Dean’s back, draping himself like a panther over a tree branch and leaned down to drag his tongue up Castiel’s cock from the base to the mid-section that disappeared into Dean’s mouth. He looked up at the Alpha from a lust-daze, letting Dean hold him up.

“Can we do the thing, Sir? Please. You promised someday.” Michael sounded drunk.

Cas continued to watch his dick disappear down Dean’s throat for a few pulses, a bit lust-hazed himself before answering Michael without breaking eye-contact with Dean. “You’ll have to get your mate’s consent, Omega. I have an agreement with him not to fuck you. If he consents, and if he convinces me that it’s not a consent under duress, we’ll do it.” Cas watched Dean’s eyes, waiting for him to connect the dots. Their scening rules forbid changes to the agreement in the middle of a scene because there was no way to be certain consent wasn’t coerced. If he’d had anyone else at his feet right now, Castiel would never even consider it, but first, this was his Dean, and he knew Dean better than anyone on the planet. And second, this scene wasn’t for fun. It was an attempt to push Dean through an emotional crunch-point that he usually needed a physical flaying to get past. Could a manipulated sexual experience that broke their contract do the same thing? 

Dean had stopped blinking, so intense was his attention riveted to Castiel’s face. He was figuring it out. As a sexual Sub, Dean was the ultimate compliant slave. He would do anything once he sank into that mindset. And he trusted Cas. They set their mutual limits into stone in their contract, allowing for a constant back-and-forth negotiation far enough away from any scene headspaces that they could both speak honestly and in good faith. The contract was everything. Castiel had never broken it intentionally before. What Michael was proposing wouldn’t hurt Dean, but it altered the sanctity of their contract. It shifted the root of power firmly into Castiel’s control, a shift they couldn’t change once they took that step.

Cas knew Dean wouldn’t say no. But would there be fallout later? What would it mean for their dynamic? Michael would know if Dean was hiding a bad reaction. But Michael was not concerned. He was…well, he was drunk.

“Dean, listen,” Michael started, rolling off his mate sideways into an Omega puddle. He reached up with warm hands and stroked Dean’s cheek, pressing in to feel the girth of Castiel inside his mate’s mouth. “I want you to fuck me. I want you to put your back into it and make me feel it for days. But I want Alpha in there too. Can you do that for me, little alpha? Can you be my good boy and do what I tell you to do? Can you fuck into my dirty hole that’s already stretched wide on Castiel’s cock?”

Dean listened to his mate with his tongue and his mouth still in motion and his eyes fixed on Castiel’s. A droplet of sweat ran down his temple. April moaned loud and low, and the tone of the vibrator lowered again. It began to pulse as the Ozzie stroked herself against it. Cas didn’t move.

Everything about this was wrong. Dean could safeword, and any question of breaking the contract would be taken back into his hands. But he wasn’t going to safeword. Dean didn’t want Castiel fucking his mate. It was coded into their contract. And Cas was fertile as he approached his Rut with a plan to impregnate his mate. Michael was working the angle from a headspace of lust and hedonism. But Cas knew what it meant to Dean.

At the bench, April recovered her control and lifted back into place, panting miserably.

If they took this route and it pulled Dean through his fall without a blowout of violence and abject self-loathing, what would that mean for the future?

Dean pulled free of Castiel’s cock, kneeling literally and metaphorically at the feet of power, choosing whether to stand still and let himself be steamrollered or to step out and call a halt to scene that was going off the rails from what he’d agreed to. He had spit and precome sliming his chin. His lips were red and swollen. Power dynamics crackled between them. Hierarchies are real. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“I don’t wear condoms in my home, Pet,” Cas reminded him, offering him an out. “I am unprotected. Know that there is a risk.”

“Michael’s not fertile, Sir,” Dean murmured. “It’s okay. We can give him this. I want to. Tell me what to do. Wanna be good. Let me be good for you. Cas, please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Yeah, Dean understood what Cas was doing. “Dean,” Cas ran a hand into the hair along the side of Dean’s head. “I need you to be sure.”

“Yeah. Wanna be good.” Dean leaned in and lay his cheek on Castiel’s belly, looking up at him. Michael sat beside him on the floor, struggling to read the weighted looks between the alphas.

Still not breaking eye contact, Cas reached for Michael’s shoulder. “Come up here and straddle my hips, Michael. Let’s get you seated. Then you direct our Sub. Come here.”

Michael didn’t need to be told twice. Dean sat back on his heels, and Michael took his place, standing with his feet wide and then easing down with his knees outside of Castiel’s hips. April cried out, hungrily.

“Eyes on me, Kitten!” Cas corrected her without raising his head.

“Sir,” she wailed. “I can’t!”

“Your choices have not changed,” he reminded her. "You’re doing well, love. I’m proud of you.”

Michael craned his head sharply down and held Castiel’s cock at its base. He dropped slowly into place, adjusting to the girth easily until he was seated in Castiel’s lap.

“Kiss me,” Castiel urged. Dean watched Cas’ arms circle Michael’s back and help him find a gentle rhythm as the two kissed deeply. To Dean, the wait seemed interminable. He was on the outs with his husband, and he could only wait in the cold for an invitation back in where it was warm. He settled into his waiting posture: on his knees, butt on his heels, palms on his thighs, shoulders back, knees wide, toes… Dean had his toes curled beneath him, taking his weight. Castiel’s position, not Michael’s. His eyes were up as well, watching the play of muscles across Michael’s back, watching Castiel’s fingers dig into Michael’s flesh over his ribs. 

Castiel’s position.

Dean considered. Michael would be the one directing him. But this was Castiel’s scene. Dean decided his first impulse was right and stayed where he was. Up on his toes. Such a little thing. He licked his lips, concentrating. He risked a glance behind him and caught April’s eye for only a moment before facing front again. She looked out of her mind in desperation. Dean didn’t need that in his head. For all the things Castiel had made him do over the years, all the painful, delightful, humiliating and wonderful things, tonight felt different.

It felt like a test, and Dean was determined to pass. He watched Cas fuck Michael from a front-row spot, and he schooled himself to compliant. In his head, he could feel Michael rolling in pleasure. He could feel Castiel on the brink of something more significant than an orgasm. Dean whined involuntarily. He wanted to be good. But he wanted to touch.

Cas scooched down until he was back on his tailbone giving Michael a flat seat and leverage. He planted his feet and thrust upward into the soft channel. For a time, it seemed the Dominants had forgotten their Subs altogether. Dean concentrated on breathing smoothly and keeping his gaze situated on the back of Michael’s neck, straight through to Castiel’s eyes. A chorus of voices sprung up in his head, ridiculing him, castigating him, reminding him that he wasn’t worth his master’s touch. Dean swallowed.

Michael engaged his thighs, rising up and slapping back down into the Alpha’s lap. He threw his head back and groaned. April mimicked the sound and let herself enjoy a few pulses from the vibrator. Dean’s fingers clutched his thighs. It was an Alpha’s prerogative to fuck the Omegas in his Pack whenever he wanted. It was his right. A tear broke free of Dean’s eyelid and tracked down his cheek.

Damnit.

Michael slowed to a steady, rolling pulse, more circular than vertical in orientation, and he looked over his left shoulder. 

“All right, Submissive. Up you go. Come up here and press in. I’m ready.”

Dean rose gracefully, blanking his mind to drown out the voices. He set one knee up on the couch outside Castiel’s thigh and braced his weight with the other foot on the floor. Like a seamstress threading a needle, Dean caught his tongue between his teeth and splayed a hand across Michael’s back, holding his rock-hard length to aim for the stretch of rim pulled taut around Castiel’s dick. Cas pulled out a little until his head and no more than a couple of inches remained inside Michael’s channel.

“Easy does it, Submissive,” Michael coached, leaning forward. “Give me that alpha cock. Make it good for me, boy. I wanna come on two cocks.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean replied. A drop of sweat dripped from his nose onto Michael’s back. Maybe it was a tear. Dean wasn’t logging his bodily fluids. He had a job to do. DP with two alphas was always a tricky business. They couldn’t have tried with anyone but an Omega. But Dean knew what he was doing. This side of the equation he had practice with. He pressed his head right at the tight play of muscle at the top of Michael’s rim, and he pressed forward, pulling Michael back by his shoulder.

There was a tight pain, pressure, a feeling that the task was impossible. And then his head slipped into vice-like tight heat. Cas surge forward as well, dragging Dean in with him until they were both well-seated. Michael cried out, clutching Cas’ shoulder and reaching back to hold Dean by the hip.

“HOLD!” he ordered. “Dean, don’t move! God! Fuck!”

April gasped and moaned. She gave up entirely, pressing her crotch back and down and riding the vibrator aggressively. She came with a wail, panted for a moment with the vibrator pressed into her inner thigh, and then dove back in for more.

Dean spread his fingers wide and grasped Michael’s hips. He pressed his forehead between Michael’s shoulder blades. Sweat mingled and dripped down a fountain of three sculpted bodies to lodge in a dark stain on the couch. Dean sobbed, no longer capable of holding back the waterworks. He felt euphoric and agonized, righteous and wrong at the same time. Michael’s channel spasmed, stretching impossibly. Michael hyperventilated briefly, working through the pain. He adjusted his knees, forcing Dean and Cas both to press in deeper to stay seated, and Michael hissed.

All of them had trouble finding their breath. All of them were close. They wouldn’t last long.

“All right, Dean. Remember what I said,” Michael huffed. “Make me feel it. I wanna ache for days.”

Dean breathed heavily onto Michael’s back. He eased his hips back, feeling Alpha’s cock catch and drag on his even with the abundant lubrication of Michael’s slick. He pressed back in, watching the flesh of Michael’s rim pull tight and then invert with his thrust. Dean was hypnotized by the sight. Beneath him, Alpha’s thighs engaged, and the man began a delicious counterstroke. Dean whined and pulled out again, careful not to risk sliding free. With his length and Castiel’s they had room to move.

“I said fuck me, Dean, not slow dance!”

“Shit,” Dean breathed. “Yes. Yessir.” He picked up his pace, easing into it. Castiel maintained his slower rhythm so that they lost all coordination, working at cross-purposes on some strokes and in conjunction to both press in at once on others. Michael flattened his chest against Cas, holding on for dear life and arching his back. Cas grunted and grabbed his hips to hold him level. The Alpha snarled over Michael’s head, ducked down now. Without warning, Castiel picked up the pace and slammed home again and again, lifting his hips by pressing his shoulders into the back of the couch and taking over for all of them.

“Dean,” he growled. “Get after it, Pet. Come on! Harder!” Castiel’s voice crackled with effort and strain. He was holding himself back, goading Dean to be the first to spill. But a good Submissive knows better than that. Not without an instruction. Not before his Dominant. Dominants. Dean dug his toes into the carpet and fucked hard into his mate’s channel, feeling the friction of Cas against the underside of his dick at every pass. It was rapturous, glorious pleasure. He couldn’t stop crying.

Michael’s head lolled helplessly between Dean’s shoulder and Castiel’s chest. His channel bucked and tightened around them, clenched spastically, and then Michael came all over Castiel’s pubic hair, shooting streamers up to his navel. 

“YES! FUCK, DEAN! YES!”

April came again with a corresponding cry.

Dean sobbed, out of control, helpless against the storm of hormones, voices, mixed messages, and contradictory emotions. Michael was buffeted wildly between the two men. He grimaced as he felt a rising tension at his lower back, and he screamed as he Released.

Cas gripped Michael’s hips in a bruising hold, pressed upward, and came with a loud grunt, holding supremely still as he spent himself around Dean’s cock. Dean couldn’t hold back anymore. The feel of Castiel surging, pulsing warm fluid all around him deep inside his mate set him off, and he pressed in as far as he could, close to knotting the man, but prevented by the physics of human skin elasticity, and he watched as a flood of white spend pulsed out along the channels their cocks left between them.

Dean’s cock slipped right out, expelled by the pressure of Michael’s channel once he lost the rigidity to keep it buried. Castiel’s cock softened too, but it stayed buried with the pressure off. Michael went limp into Castiel’s embrace. Dean sank back onto the floor, heaving sobs wracking him. He clutched at Castiel’s knee. He couldn’t control himself, and he couldn’t have named the emotion that had him in its grip – only that it was more powerful than he.

Michael felt it. Heard Dean’s hitching breaths and guttural sobs, and he climbed down to pull his mate into him. He rocked Dean and looked up to the Alpha. Cas slid down to join them on the floor.

“Would you go uncuff April, Michael? Bring her up to bed. I’ll meet you there.” Cas kissed Dean all over his face. “It’s okay, love. I’ve got you. You’re okay. You were so good.” He lifted Dean in his arms, watched over his mate as Michael helped her down onto shaky legs and turned the vibrator off. Cas led the way up the stairs. Dean shook in his arms, great heaving painful cries breaking from his throat. It broke Castiel’s heart. Hearing Dean cry like this always broke his heart, but it was the price of having Dean in his life. There was no way around it. Dean had fallen. That much was clear. What Cas didn’t know yet was if the child within his Tertiary could digest what Cas had just put him through as a punishment.

It needed to be real. 

That’s what Dean said.

No roleplay would work.

“Shh. You’re okay, Dean Michael. I love you, baby.” Cas laid him out in the middle of their bed and then cleared the way for Michael to help April in beside him. Cas rounded the bed. Now for the tricky part. Both Subs needed care. Michael had to be hurting. And both Dominants needed to be close to both Subs. Michael climbed right in behind April and scooted way up high on his pillow so that April lay squished tight against his belly, and he could curl around her to hold Dean’s shaking form. April rolled her back to Michael and wrapped her arms around Dean’s waist. Castiel took the far spot, embracing all three of them at once.

He rocked them as a tangle. He shushed them, holding them steady. Dean’s cries eased, but his shaking carried on for a while. April whispered softly into his tummy. Michael stroked his hair.

Dean fell asleep before Cas got a drink into him. Michael extracted himself long enough to fetch a glass of water from the bathroom and hold it for April. “You were so beautiful up there, Pete,” he told her in a soft, bedroom voice. “I’m the luckiest man alive that you let me in for that.”

“I failed kind of spectacularly,” she told him. 

“Yeah, but you failed beautifully,” he teased.

“Tell that to my ass. Now I’ve got Dean’s punishment to look forward to.” She smiled despite her words and snuggled into Michael’s chest.

“You’re going through with that punishment, Sir?” Michael asked over Dean’s head.

“Of course,” Cas replied, hardly listening. “But not tonight.”

“Sir, what’s going on with Dean? What happened back there?” Michael shoved upward again to lean against the headboard. He pulled April in to lay at his hip and kept a hand in motion in her hair while he pressed his other palm against Dean’s back. The alpha was out, dead to the world.

“We forced his fall,” Cas said softly with his face close to the back of Dean’s neck. Dean smelled delectable. “Now we wait and see if he’s all the way through it or if we just bought some time. We won’t know that for a few days. I want you to watch his dreams if you can. We need to know if the nightmares stop, and I don’t fully trust Dean to tell me.”

“Yeah, of course. I can see his dream colors even when I’m asleep myself. I’ll know.”

“Thank you, Michael. How do you feel? Do you need me to have a look?”

“No, Alpha. I’m good. That was amazing. Best sex of my life. Gonna ache for a week.”

Cas chuckled. “As scenes go, it was tame,” he commented dryly. “But I don’t suppose every scene hits the same notes for intensity. This one wasn’t a stretch of anyone’s stamina or pain threshold, but it hit deep inside Dean’s psyche, and it crossed a bucket list entry off for you. April got to test her training. I think I proved my point that there is still progress to be made in that regard.”

“And you, Sir?” April asked sleepily. “What did you get out of tonight?”

“I got to break the rules, Kitten. That’s a rare thing for a Dominant. I enjoyed tonight very much. I owe all three of you thanks for your parts in this evening’s very successful play. Tomorrow will tell if I made the right call or if I broke something between Dean and me.”

“He’s okay, Cas,” Michael said with his thumb swiping long arcs across Dean’s back. “It was intense. But he’s okay. Whatever that was that broke inside him, it was more like a logjam coming loose than something irreparable cracking open. I think it did him some good. He’s at peace right now.”

Cas settled in, feeling his body temperature climb steadily. He clung to his husband and whispered soft prayers that Dean’s fall was over for this cycle. If it weren’t, they would figure something else out.

Michael lay down, still curled around April so he could touch Dean too. Cas threw an arm across his husband to rest a hand on April’s shoulder. They fell asleep like that, entangled in each other, sleeping soundly, smelling like sex and redemption.

And before dawn, Alex climbed up from the foot of the bed and burrowed down into the bodies with his stuffed wolf and began to sing softly to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for dubious consent re an established Dom/sub contractual agreement. Cas breaks his word about the degree of contact he has with Michael. There's consent, but consent within a scene, especially one that includes this AU version of Dean, is dubious at best. For all the things Alpha pulls rank and does in this universe, this one is one of the few times he's truly overstepped his rights. Even for Lupin Pack dynamics, this is wrong.
> 
> Warning for corporal punishment of a child. I mean, there was no way that wouldn't happen, right?
> 
> And a quick qualifier from the author: I don't condone nonconsensual corporal punishment IRL. Like, at all. Especially not for children. This story is intentionally skewed from my real world moral axis in order to highlight and explore my assumptions about that axis.
> 
> Seriously, folks, vote. And whatever happens after every single vote is counted, our work continues. WWCD.


	19. Thursday, August 12, 2021

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast in the Winchester Pack on a weekday is a business meeting, one that Castiel has no business attending. The man's in Rut, ffs.
> 
> Kevin is closing in on a breakthrough, thanks to Michael.
> 
> And Dean's swirling madly in the wake of his unprecedented fall and rebound. There's not chance he escapes this with his hide intact. But, I mean, do we really want him to?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure where to start on this A/N. There's so much to say about the finale, and all of it insufficient. I took some time to process. I wrote a coda that doesn't explore my immense disappointment at the choices made for the final two episodes. And I'm grieving and listening to Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms' on repeat. I wasn't prepared. I'm still not prepared. And while I found the final episode itself, as a stand-alone rather than as a finale, to be beautifully presented and acted, I'm in shock that they mean to leave it like that. 
> 
> If you feel outraged at the erasure of multiple representative faces, if you feel personally stricken by the injustice of a show that more than once swore to have your back, you're feelings are valid. And I see you.

NOW:

“Alex, buddy, c’mere kiddo. Wake up for me. We need to change the sheets.” Michael eased the whining pup into his arms and out of the cooling circle of urine centered right in the middle of the enormous bed. Alex whined and clung to O-Pop, wrapping sopping legs around Michael’s midriff. The early summer sunrise turned their curtains a warm pink hue. 

The heavy scent of Castiel’s impending Rut mingled with April’s sleepy cloud of rising delicious Heat-scent to leave a perfumed fog over the bed, turned sour by the smell of urine. Cas was gone, off on his morning run no doubt, but his scent lingered.

Dean rolled off the opposite side of the bed with a sour grumble about waking up in pee more often than not these days. He stifled his complaints at a look from his mate, instead, helping April strip the bed with practiced teamwork. In the bathroom, the shower spigot turned on. Dean stuffed the bedding into the hamper by the bathroom door and ushered April through into the bathroom before following her in. The usual argument that if Alex was going to continue to sneak into their bed in the wee hours of the morning and pee in it then he should be wearing pullups under his PJ’s died on Dean’s lips when the preschooler dove for him from Michael’s arms with a heart-rending wail of sorrow.

Dean melted a little. “Okay, Ace, I know. Daddy’s not mad at you. It happens, kiddo. You’re okay.” Dean caught him and cuddled him close, rubbing warm circles on his back. “We’ll get you all clean and good as new.” All three adults and the little boy crowded into the shower together, sharing the three showerheads. Dean passed his son off to April after she soaped her own body clean. April held Alex warm under the spray while Michael shampooed her hair and Dean scrubbed his own body. They emerged fresh and pink, warm and dewy, still wordlessly passing Alex back and forth as each of them needed hands for different tasks. Ultimately, dressed only in a pair of loose sleep pants, Michael took the boy down the hall to the nursery to dress him. Dean wiped down the mattress liner while April fetched fresh sheets.

“This is the last set in the cupboard, Dean,” she told him as she shook the fitted sheet out and strew it across the bed. “If it happens again tonight, we don’t have another set of clean linens.”

“Fred’s out sick, kid. No one’s been keeping track of this shit. There’s probably a mountain of pee-sheets piled up in the laundry room. God knows what else is about to fall apart on us. First, it’s bedsheets, and next we run out of bacon. I swear, if that happens, someone’s head is gonna roll.” Dean arranged the sheets on his side of the bed and then cast the comforter back over. 

“I’m sure there’s bacon, alpha,” April placated. “Fred hasn’t been gone that long. You’re just cranky because you woke up wet. Come on. I’ll get the coffee brewing for you before the rest of the munchkins wake up. You can put a list of household emergencies together for Gabe.”

By the time April had three oversized mugs poured and a second pot brewing, Michael was down with Alex. The boy reached for Dean again. Michael dressed Alex smartly in a soft pair of shorts and a button-down seersucker shirt. Dean set his son into the crook of his lap with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee. April handed a sippy cup of orange juice to Alex, and he settled back against Dean’s chest, serene with his head resting in the notch of Dean’s armpit. It was early enough that they had a full hour before the routine of breakfast would demand the Subs doff their robes and take to their knees. Cas was out running. No one else was awake yet. One positive to Alex’s frequent early morning mishaps was that it bought Dean and the Omegas a moment of quiet before their busy schedules forced them apart for the day.

The coffee hit Dean just right, clearing grouchy cobwebs out of the corners of his mind. Waking up wet, cold, and smelly was unpleasant enough, but swimming through Heat-scent everywhere he turned didn’t help. April’s fragrance was a jarring mix of Omega-Heat, which Dean’s alpha drooled over, and feminine arousal, which he found repulsive. When he was awake, his front-brain catalogued and handled the disconnect for him, but when he was sleepy, it made him tetchy. Thank the Universe for caffeine. 

Sunlight streamed through the window. From here, Dean would be able to spot Cas returning from his run, lithe and toned, sweaty and invigorated. Fragrant.

Michael slid into his chair at Dean’s elbow, and he scootched it around the corner until he was close to his alpha’s sleep-muzzed softness. Alex reached out and tangled his fingers into Michael’s hair, closed his eyes and sipped his juice. Michael rested his head against Dean’s shoulder, careful about how he sipped his coffee, tranquil for the moment. Then Dean cleared his throat and…

“I wanna talk to you two before Cas gets home,” Dean said, pulling April closer with his eyes. “I’m actually glad Ace woke us up. We need to talk about last night.”

“I peed in the bed, Daddy,” Alex informed him. “I didn’t mean to.”

Dean caressed the top of Alex’s head and patted his chubby thigh. “Not a big deal, Ace. Accidents aren’t your fault. Remember we talked about that. Sometimes stuff happens when we’re asleep, and there’s nothing we can do about that. It happens.”

“You not mad?”

“I’m not mad, bud. I’m not ever going to be mad for accidents you can’t help. We just change the sheets and clean the pee off and it’s over. You got me?”

“You was mad when you woke up,” Alex pointed out. “Said ‘Icky’!”

Dean chuckled. “Well, yeah, man, it was icky. But it was icky for you too, and it woke you up same as me. Doesn’t mean it was your fault. So, let’s just let it go and chill for a bit before everyone else wakes up.”

“What about last night, Dean?” April asked. “It seemed like that hit you pretty hard.”

“Yeah,” Dean wrapped both hands around his mug and sighed into Alex’s hair. Michael sat up to listen. “Look, guys, I need you both to understand before Cas gets in and stirs everything up again, wringing his hands and freaking out…I’m okay. All right? I’m not hurt and nothing between us is fu… is messed up.”

“You don’t have to explain to us. This is between you and Cas, Dean,” Michael protested.

“No, man. It’s not. Listen to me. This is about my fall, and you’re involved in those, same as Alpha is.” Dean shifted a little, adjusting to the itch between his shoulder blades at having to drag personal crap out into the light. “I don’t know how much of what went down last night made sense to either of you. But the thing is, it was awesome, and I’m fine. So, when Cas comes in here all white-faced and worried, you need to let me deal with his concerns.”

“He said you fell,” April said. “And he said he broke the rules.”

“He did,” Dean affirmed. “And, yeah, I did. Thing is, the way he broke the rules is going to freak him out. He’s going to think I’m hiding crap from him, that I’m pissed, that he destabilized everything, and that I shouldn’t trust him anymore. But I’m telling you both, it’s not like that. Michael, I need you watching inside my head. You know what the falls look like, and you can warn us all if you see one revving up to pounce – in case it’s not as resolved as it feels like. And April, I need you to distract the old man. Can you do that for me?”

“Well, that’s going to be a piece of cake this close to his Rut,” she observed with a quick grin. “He’s out there jogging with a hard-on right now. He’ll probably come home horny enough to forget everything else. But I don’t understand. What rule did he break? What had you so upset last night, Dean? You cried pretty hard for how soft a scene it was.”

“I know,” Dean sighed. “It wasn’t the sex. It’s hard to explain. We have a contract, kid. There are restrictions in there against what went down last night. And he _never_ breaks the contract. You know Cas. Scene rules are sacred to the man. He hates what I put us both through when I fall, and I don’t think he planned this ahead of time. I think it was a ‘Hail Mary’ experiment to shove me through without having to beat me for once. It was impulsive, and it worked – I think – but it broke his cardinal rule about scening. He’s going to be beating himself up about that this morning. Mark my words.”

April interrupted. “No, I don’t understand. You didn’t do anything last night you haven’t done before.”

“We’ve never done _that_ before,” Michael disagreed. “I would remember.”

April tsked. “You have a line in your contract against double-penetrating your mate?” she challenged Dean skeptically.

Dean raised his hands to them. “The contract specifics are private, guys. The point is that Cas broke it. Just trust me on this. And that’s going to set him on his ear today. I only brought it up because I need you both to know going in that he’s going to be worried over nothing. Okay? You with me? I’m fine. Better than fine. Last night was amazing.”

Michael let his recall put a warm, sappy look on his face as he stirred his coffee and stared dreamily into Dean’s eyes. “It sure was…”

April cast worried looks between them.

Michael tapped his spoon on the edge of his cup. “Not to mention you slept all night without a nightmare for the first time in two weeks.”

“Exactly,” Dean agreed.

Behind them, Tony came in through the staff entrance with fabric shopping bags hanging from both arms. April rose to help him with his bundles and pour him a cup of coffee. Alex thunked his cup down onto the table and squirmed out of his daddy’s lap. He followed April hoping to be allowed to help unpack the bags and stock the kitchen with the day’s goodies. Michael used the opportunity to arrange himself further into Dean’s space, snuggling closer with his back to Dean’s chest and forcing his mate to put an arm around him. Dean cinched him in.

“Think the fall is really over?” Michael questioned over his shoulder.

“Feels like it might be,” Dean agreed, as confidently as he could knowing there was still a chance it could reignite if he and Cas had read the tea leaves wrong. “I feel like what happened was that he reframed things but set the same basics into motion – taking away all of my power and making me grovel to get it back, like pulling the ground out from under me and making me wonder if I’m about to slide down into the pit, making me put all my trust in him to carry me through. We’ll have to see. I’m hopeful, Michael. It’s been a long time since I felt hopeful about anything to do with those damn falls.”

“Language,” Michael said with a smirk. Dean shot his head round and breathed a sigh of relief that Alex was inside the pantry where he couldn’t hear. April released Portia’s gate as she returned with a small plate of danishes. The dog made a circuit of greetings and then disappeared into the pantry to help Alex. April took the chair next to Michael, turned it to face him, and sat with her legs up in his lap, leaning back and reaching for a danish.

“Tony has a little sous chef,” she announced. “Oh, and he said he brought bacon for your breakfast.” She nudged Dean with her toe.

Dean grinned into his cup. But his smile faded as he set the mug down and picked the topic back up. “So, instead of burning the house down like I usually have to do, last night we burned our contract. We managed to put my fall and the resolution of it all into the same moment. It sounds shitty, but it _feels_ awesome. We’re closer than we’ve ever been to the kind of dynamic I want. I’d love to throw that contract on the pyre and take my chances with whatever his wolf feels like doling out. April, I didn’t mean to tangle you up in that mess yesterday. It’s not fair that Alpha tagged you with the punishment I earned. I deliberately broke _all_ his rules. That’s more than you signed up for. I’ll talk to him.”

“Oh, really? Why would you do that?” April was suddenly prickly. She swallowed, set her feet on the floor, and sat upright. Her irises flashed golden. “I don’t need out of the consequence I earned, Dean.”

Dean shook his head. “He was just trying to turn up the volume on my headspace, kid. There’s no way he means to follow through. I earned myself a full caning, I think. He may even pull out the birches. You don’t deserve that. I can talk him down…”

“Dean, don’t you dare! What makes you think I want you to step in?”

“But…”

“I knew the consequences from the start, alpha. Nothing about this is unfair. He told me what would happen if I failed, and Dean, I failed. You would deprive me of my follow through?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “No, I know you need the consequences. But, April, you don’t know the extent… You don’t know everything I did. I pulled out all the stops to piss him off on purpose. Sam’s black eye, kid, that’s on me.”

“Not anymore,” she quipped firmly. “Now it’s on me. And if it’s all the same to you, alpha, I would like you to butt out and leave it there. My contract with the man is just as important as yours is. And just as private.”

Dean stared at her, speechless. Michael licked his lips and patted his knee to get her to perch her calves back on his thigh again. Dean glanced down at his mate, but Michael was determined to avoid Dean’s eye. Michael knew Dean could feel his amusement through their bonds. He caught April’s ankles when she lifted them back up and set to rubbing her feet in his lap. “You’re not going to win this argument, Dean,” Michael advised. “She loves a good pissed off Alpha as much as you do. And she’s coming into Heat. I suggest you not get in her way. She’s not afraid of the pain she’s got coming. I don’t like it either, but it’s none of our business. And by the way,” Michael added as an afterthought, “Sam texted me for permission to collect on your little tantrum. I told him the ball’s in his court on that one. I’m washing my hands of this incident. So, when he’s ready, you have no excuse to put him off. Cas may have swapped targets, Dean, but we both know Sam hasn’t.”

Dean gulped. “Yeah,” he muttered into his cup. “I know.”

Alex emerged from the pantry with a bag of apples too big for him to carry, so he dragged them toward the island. April laughed and went to help him fill the fruit bowl.

Cas appeared around the curve of the drive, still jogging, slowing to a walk with his fingers at his throat, checking his pulse. Michael straightened in his chair, shooting Dean a bracing look and a nod before joining the morning business in the kitchen. He called Portia back into her corner promising her breakfast. April tracked Cas through the window too, grinning when he looked up and caught his mate and husband both watching him approach. He waved perfunctorily and then disappeared, on his way in through the garage.

“I don’t like it,” Dean grumbled again just in case he hadn’t made his case well enough the first time.

“No one asked you,” April whispered to him as she passed to go meet her mate. Dean growled. He buried his face in his coffee cup to mute the smell of Heat. It didn’t work.

Michael held the dog back with an assertive finger pointing her to stay out of the pup’s way and then handed Portia’s feeding dish to Alex to set down for her. Portia attacked her breakfast just as Sam appeared in the archway with Hank wrapped groggily around his neck. 

“Morning, Sam,” Michael greeted.

Dean’s head popped up, then he rolled glumly back down over his coffee mug, reluctant to face his brother. Cas may have absolved him of punishment for his misdeeds, but Sam had made no such release. There would be no convincing Sam that April now carried responsibility for those punches. If Dean even tried that, Michael would put a stop to it.

“Morning, Michael,” Sam answered warmly. He set Hank on his feet to join his cousin supervising Portia hoover her breakfast, and he served himself a cup from the coffeepot. He brought the whole pot to the table and topped Dean’s mug off while he was at it. “Morning, Dean.”

“Sammy.”

“You’re up early.”

“Alex wet the bed again,” Dean told him quietly.

“I would have expected you to send one of the Omegas to deal with a wet bed,” Sam said into his cup.

“Dude, I’m not a sexist,” Dean ruffled. “I pull my share of parent-crap. Besides, he was in our bed when he wet himself. Kinda hard to sleep through that.”

Sam laughed. “You got me there. Nighttime pullups are a thing, you know. Hank still wears them.”

“I know. Michael has him convinced that he’s ready to go it like a big boy overnight, and he’s threatened the rest of us with disembowelment if we put doubts in the kid’s head.” Dean glanced up. Sam’s eye was a brilliant swollen shade of mottled blue. Dean hissed. “Jesus, Sam!”

“I know. Someone sucker punched me last night.”

“Sucker punched, huh? Sounds like your own fault. You still don’t keep your arms up, dude. I’ve tried to teach you. If you leave yourself open like that, someone’s always gonna take advantage.” Dean tried to keep his voice light.

Sam shot him a bitchface.

“Consider it free advice,” Dean tried valiantly.

“Thanks for that.”

“Anytime, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam.”

The door to the garage slammed accompanied by scuffling and moaning. Cas staggered in carrying April with one hand around her back and one under her ass, their faces smashed together, eyes closed. Her legs wrapped around his waist. The smell alone brought everyone’s heads up, attention riveted. Blindly, Cas worked his way into the kitchen on bare feet with his shirt already missing. He stumbled toward the island. He set April’s backside on it and pulsed his hips into hers with both arms holding her tightly.

“Yeah, he looks devastated,” Michael teased as he passed Dean’s chair on his way out of the kitchen.

Dean huffed. Michael ruffled his hair, and Dean dodged, annoyed.

“Dean,” Sam said.

“What?” Dean turned to face his brother confrontationally.

“We need to discuss this. You punched me.”

“And I’m sorry, man, but I don’t know what you want me to do about it now.”

“You’re sorry.” Sam imbued his voice with a touch of disbelief. “You’re sorry? Look, I’m sure Castiel roasted you for it, but you don’t get off the hook that easy. You still owe _me._ You gave me a black eye, you jerk.”

Cas released April’s lips to look round. “Sam, he hasn’t been punished for striking you. He’s all yours. You two have thirty minutes before breakfast. If you need more than that, I suggest you wait until your lunch hour.”

“Half an hour should do it, sir,” Sam told the Alpha without looking away from Dean’s face.

Dean rolled his shoulders and leaned in. “Look, Sam, it was a Tertiary fall. You know how I get when I fall. I’m sorry. I’d never clock you if I wasn’t up to my eyeballs in it myself.”

“A fall?” Sam asked skeptically. “Seriously? That’s your excuse?”

“Dude, and Alpha pulled me through it without a single swat. I think we’ve had a breakthrough here. You should be congratulating us. We’re onto something. Right, Cas?” Dean cut his eyes toward his husband, but Cas was already lost once more in his mate. April winked at Dean over Castiel’s shoulder. Her thighs were bare as her robe fell open. Apparently, Cas wasn’t going to wait until his shower to wet his whistle. He wasn’t waiting on breakfast or a private space either. Castiel’s running shorts angled sharply at his hips. He’d tucked the front elastic down behind his scrotum, and he had April seated right at the edge of the island. Dean couldn’t see, but there was no doubt Cas had her speared right there in the kitchen with breakfast preparation underway. He thrust assertively with his hips. April dropped her head back and moaned, throwing herself into Dean’s request to distract their mutual Dom. 

Dean was on his own with Sam.

Be careful what you wish for.

Sam leaned in close to him. “I don’t care if the two of you cured cancer, Dean. You don’t get to throw punches without consequences. If it was a fall, then, man, it was right on pattern, and I know from experience there’s no resolution for you without consequences. Not to mention the fact that it’s just not going to happen that you don’t account to me when it was me you lambasted. You know better. Come with me…unless you want to do it here.”

“I need to help Kate get the pups up and dressed,” Dean argued as Sam _helped_ him out of his chair by the arm.

“Michael’s already doing that,” Sam pointed out.

“Someone needs to stay here and watch the boys,” Dean tried again, stumbling after Sam toward the archway. Gabe raised an eyebrow at them as he entered with Kali.

“Kali and Gabe can watch two pups," Sam told him. Hank took Sam’s free hand and trotted alongside his father, intrigued.

“Yeah, bro,” Gabe smirked. “We got your pups.” He caught sight of Cas and April and rolled his eyes. “Ace, kiddo, come in here and show Uncle Gabriel the tricks Portia can do.” He led the pup into the parlor at an uneasy limp and whistled for the dog, leaving Cas and April alone with Tony, who couldn’t smell them the way everyone else had to. Sam handed Hank off to Kali with a nod and marched Dean to the library.

Once the door closed behind them, Dean’s demeanor changed. He tugged free of Sam’s hold and stalked a few feet away before turning back. “Look, you’re right. I deserve it. Blister me, Sam. But I need you to keep Cas out of this. Whatever you need from me, fine. Just don’t get him thinking about it anymore after this morning, you get me? We’re through here after this. I’ll even apologize and mean it.”

Sam blinked. “This isn’t about Cas. This is about you acting like a complete asshole and expecting me to have no issue with it. You fucking _punched_ me, Dean! And you weren’t even going to apologize. Do I look like a doormat to you?”

“It was a fall, Sam!”

“So?! You think I don’t know what that means to you? Dean, I’ve been there for your falls when _no one_ else was there for you. I’ve pulled you out of the fire in your head with my own two hands. And I know you need to throw down and draw blood when the floor drops out from under you. I get it, Dean. I really do. But that doesn’t mean we just brush it off like nothing happened. You don’t get to lash out like that and then treat me like I’m inevitable collateral damage, and it doesn’t matter. And especially if whatever happened between you two didn’t include any spanking, because you don’t work that way, and neither do I. We’re all out of sync right now, you and me, and I only know one way to fix it.”

Dean carded his fingers through his hair. He wilted visibly. “Sam, I’m sorry. You’re right. I knew what I was doing. Goddamn, I’m sick of this merry-go-round. It was the same damn thing as always, man. I panicked. I didn’t think he was mad enough to set me on fire. I needed the fire, Sammy. I told myself you deserved it because you should know better than to put yourself in between him and me when I’m that gone. I was mad enough to hit anyone right then. I would’ve punched April if she tried to shove me back in that office.”

“Dean, I’m never going to desert you when you need me. And you needed me. … Or you needed someone. You would have hurt yourself if I’d left you alone. But you know how this works. Fall or no fall, I can’t let you off. And frankly? I’m not feeling like letting you off anyway. If you and Cas found a way through this one last night, then I shouldn’t have had to drag an apology out of you this morning. You’re not that much of an asshole.”

“Apparently, I am,” Dean remarked, holding Sam’s eye.

“Drop the robe and put your palms on the seat of that chair,” Sam deadpanned, offering no reaction to Dean’s cheekiness. “And if this is you after the culmination of a fall by this new method, then I’m not a fan.”

Dean followed Sam’s pointing finger after tossing his robe over the long reading table. Sam was still in his pajamas. He didn’t have a belt or his paddle on him. It didn’t matter. Sam’s palm was immense, and his arm was muscled. Dean grimaced as Sam’s hand fell, rhythmic. Methodical. Sam set his left hand on Dean’s back and slapped echoing strikes that curled Dean’s toes until he felt Dean’s body release the clench of tension he was holding onto and slump a bit over his arms. Dean bore it as a rather routine exercise, more like an Omega than a Sub, and Sam realized there would be no exhale of guilt. 

Dean had no guilt to release. The jerk.

“That’s enough,” Sam muttered. “I know you don’t have total control of yourself anyway.” Sam helped him stand. “Look, just promise me you’ll let me know if there’s something about this latest fall I need to understand. You’re sure it’s done?”

Dean sniffled and scrubbed at his eyes. “I think it’s done,” he said soberly. “But I won’t know for sure until it comes back or doesn’t. It can’t be this easy, can it? Why would a soft touch work this time when it’s never worked before?”

Sam handed Dean his robe. “Did you goad me this morning to try to lock that down?” Sam asked. “Like a little insurance policy?”

Dean scoffed, wringing the robe between his fists. “Probably.” He glanced up at his brother. “You mad?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Come on, I need to dress for breakfast, and you need to finish your coffee before Michael takes it away from you for breakfast kneeling.”

Dean shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sam. I mean it. You come through for me again and again. You’re right. You don’t deserve to have me aim a fist at you. You don’t deserve that.”

Sam chuckled and took the robe out of his hands. He wrapped an arm around Dean’s shoulders and led him out of the library. “Well, one thing yesterday did was remind me to block when you’re throwing punches. If I’m going to bitch that you lambed me, at least I ought to defend myself better.”

“Dad would’ve said you did this to yourself,” Dean commented dryly.

“Dad was a bit of a prick, Dean. I think we can raise pups without putting them through some of the things Dad taught us.” Sam let him go at the stairs, but Dean caught his brother’s arm and reeled him in for a hug. Thumping Dean’s back, Sam said, “I know, man. Let it go. We’re okay. I forgive you.” He handed Dean his robe and touched his shoulder.

“Daddy!” Kat called as she worked her way down the stairs holding tightly to Kate’s hand.

“Hey, Kitty-Kat,” Dean smiled a watery smile, sniffling subtly as Sam left him to dress.

Emma pointed at Dean from halfway down the stairway. “See, Nanny Kate? Daddy’s naked. Why I hafta wears clothes for breakfast?” she asked. Dean scooped Kat off the steps and took Emma’s hand to ease her down the last few.

“Papa’s rules, Emma,” Kate answered smoothly. “Papa says no naked pups at the table; only grown-up Subs can be naked.” She shared a longsuffering look with Dean. Keeping Emma from stripping down to nothing was a constant argument.

“JT, walk!” Michael shouted from the landing just as forty-five pounds of four-year-old lost his footing and tumbled feet over head down the last half flight.

Dean skittered sideways and dropped instantly to his knees. He broke JT’s fall with his thighs pressed together at the base of the stairs, still clinging to Kat at his shoulder. Kate stood frozen, shocked at the speed of the fall. Emma burst into tears. JT lay on his back, eyes wide, head pressed into Dean’s groin. Dean muffled a pained groan.

Michael hurried down with Jimmy in his arms. “Jesus, JT! You could’ve brained yourself. Thank god you were there, Dean. That was some quick thinking. You’ve got lightning-fast reflexes.” 

Sam shouldered past him and plucked JT off the step. He set the boy on his feet, dropping to sit before him with his son between his knees, feeling him all over to see if he was injured. JT recovered from his shock and joined Emma in wailing.

Dean released the breath he was holding. “I think he’s okay, Sammy. Just lucky I was here to break his fall. That floor is marble tiles, man. Here, Kat, sweetheart, walk for Daddy, wouldja? I need a breather.”

“You’re coming with me, young man,” Sam scolded. “You’ve been warned about running on the stairs.” Sam picked his son up, still wailing, and carried him back up toward the room he shared with Jess.

“Hey, go easy on him, Sammy,” Dean called. “He’s just had the life scared out of him.”

“Come on, Dean,” Michael eased his arm over Dean’s shoulder. “Sam’s not going to hurt him.”

“Says you. Sammy’s in a ‘spank first, ask questions later’ state of mind.”

“Yes, I felt that through your bond,” Michael agreed as he joined Dean in herding their multitude to the kitchen. “Serves you right, you know. If Sam hadn’t asked to do it, I would have added it to breakfast. But he’s not going to hurt JT. Sam’s a terrific father. He knows when a bad choice is its own punishment. He’ll just help JT connect the dots and make sure he understands that falling is the consequence of running on the stairs. He’ll probably set up spanking as an expectation for next time. We could learn a lot from your brother, you know.”

Dean’s usual eye roll didn’t materialize. He found, strangely, that he had no impulse to ridicule his brother. Sam _was_ a terrific father, and Dean was feeling decidedly peaceful toward Sam even as his backside still throbbed. He felt Michael exploring that emotion in his head and shrugged at his mate. Michael chuckled at Dean’s expense and kissed him chastely before calling pups to their seats at the table.

The rest of the family assembled for breakfast. Dean got the pups settled, checking that each of them would pass muster when the big dog appeared before he ducked into the butler’s pantry for his knee pillow and took a few deep, grounding breaths. He sought his wolf and coaxed it forward. He used his relative privacy to rub the sting out of his ass, then he carried his pillow out to his mate.

Cain set Dean’s chair beside April’s near the wall in its usual morning spot. Dean’s coffee mug was gone. Michael took the pillow from his mate with a soft smile. He placed it on the floor to his left, by the corner. A simple flick of his eyes put Dean on his knees. Inside their bonds, Michael took hold of Dean’s worries, his upset, his discombobulation, and he soothed everything. He massaged the sense of peace Dean felt after his morning spanking, and he teased at it to keep Dean focused on it. He took hold of Dean’s hair near his forehead and lifted his head back firm and tight, forcing Dean to meet his eyes.

Dean floated. Michael felt him lift from within and gently let go. Together they struck the harmonic that let them commune as one inside their heads, master to slave. Michael’s chest heaved at the intimacy and the trust. Dean blinked softly, adrift. Michael smirked and set his mate’s head back to level. He patted Dean’s cheek and handed him a piece of a danish, feeding it into Dean’s mouth and reveling in the softness of Dean’s lips on his fingertips. It was nearly a kiss. 

Michael used subtle mental direction to press Dean’s weight backward into his heels to accentuate the pain in his backside before the sting faded altogether. He felt the brief battle in Dean’s head over complying versus obstinate refusal. The debate ended with resolution to behave for his Sir and a bit of overemphasis to his grinding his ass into his heels. Nothing showed on the Sub’s face. As always, the knowledge that Michael, alone, would ever have access to that side of Dean was a rush. This morning, reveling in their bonds was enough. Michael clenched his core and fed the soreness of his channel to his mate like a morsel of breakfast. 

Cas bustled in from the back stairway, showered and dressed, with his head close to Sarah’s, rattling off a quick stream of instructions before he looked up to check that his Pack were all in their places. “Where is Sam?” Cas was dressed for the office, crisp in a navy suit. The dry smell of scent-blockers preceded him.

“He’s discussing the dangers of running down the stairs with his son,” Michael offered. “He’ll be down in a bit. Where’s Pete?”

“I put April back to bed,” Cas said airily. He held Sarah’s chair for her and then took his own, a king in his court. “She needs to rest up. We’re locking in for our cycle tonight after dinner.”

Kali sneezed. “You’re not going out like that, Castiel, surely. You’re working from home today, aren’t you?” she asked in surprise. Tony brought a platter across and set it on the table near the head before returning to the island for the rest.

“I wish I could,” Cas told her, reaching for the serving spoon. “The new wing opens next week. There are critical decisions we must make today. And Monroe leaves for Washington with Bobby this afternoon. I can’t miss today.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Cas, you know I trust your judgement, but how can you trust that man to lobby for us after what he did? I don’t understand. It’s reckless. The Stynes are snakes. That whole family are snakes!”

Cas finished serving his plate and handed the spoon to Cain. “I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we? And he won’t be there alone. He’s on Bobby’s short leash. If you can’t put your faith in me, then trust Bobby. The Stynes have made an about face, Gabe. With Eldon serving his sentence and Jacob and Eli both under Henrickson’s eye in Dallas, even if Monroe planned to double-cross me – which he won’t – I have adequate hostages to ensure he toes the company line. That’s to put it bluntly. There will be no need for Machiavellian tactics. I can smell their intentions, Gabriel. Eldon’s the only holdout, and he’s hobbled and out of favor. They all have the kind of experience that makes for effective lobbyists. I would be stupid not to use it. Monroe knows what I expect from him and his sons, and he knows the ramifications of letting me down. Or at least he will know after today. I may or may not have put this moment for his final instructions off until I’m on the cusp of Rut. Emma, leave your buttons alone; you are at Papa’s breakfast table; your shirt stays on. Monique, would you mind taking a plate up to my mate? She’s in her own room this morning. She’ll be eating light. No coffee.”

“Certainly, Alpha,” the maid answered cheerfully.

Sam returned at the tail end of Cas’ statement. JT had ahold of his neck and was clinging on with his face buried in Sam’s chest. Sam sank down into his seat with an apology to the Alpha and nodded Jess to shift toward Michael to allow Sam to deposit JT between them.

“Is everything all right?” Cas asked him.

“JT fell on the stairs, sir. He’s unhurt, but he needs to slow down. Right, champ?” Sam cocked his head toward his son. JT nodded but didn’t raise his head. “We were talking it over.”

“You’ve had a busy morning already,” Cas commented. “Let’s hope it doesn’t portend the same for the rest of the day.”

“No, sir,” Sam told him as Jess filled JT’s plate. “That’s enough for us for one day. But you can thank Dean’s quick reflexes that JT didn’t crack his skull open at the bottom of the stairs.”

“Is that so?” Cas looked to Michael. 

“Yes, sir,” Michael agreed. “Instant reaction. He didn’t have to think about it at all.”

“Hm,” Cas answered with the barest huff and half a smile. “You know, his, uh, his reflexes slow considerably when he’s close to a fall.”

Michael stroked Dean’s head, down his hairline and onto his shoulder. “Then he must not be close to a fall,” Michael added with a corollary smirk.

“So it would seem,” Cas replied. “We’ll have to wait and see. Sarah, would you pass the scones?”

Breakfast was always Castiel’s first scheduled meeting of his workday. The Pack was accustomed to his style, but the Rut-scent at the head of the table punctuated his usual businesslike demeanor, turning up the volume on his innate dominance. He held everyone’s attention without trying. Cain barely ate for hanging on every word. Jess stared holes in her plate, eating mechanically with her nostrils flaring. Michael answered the Alpha’s questions almost before he spoke them. And Sarah sat at Cas’ left elbow, studying everyone and steadying Kate beside her. Sam appeared impervious, she noted. But even Kali licked her lips a little more often, a tell that she might be less unaffected than she wanted revealed. 

Kali fixated on Gabriel, pestering him to eat well and wiping his mouth for him with her own napkin. Possibly the most telling aspect was that Gabe bore the attention without complaint. 

Scents in a stable Pack affect everyone bonded within it, and scents from the Pack Alpha can set the whole Pack on its head. Cas mostly faced his plate as he spoke, addressing his bacon and eggs more than his Pack, oblivious, it seemed, to the heightened wariness. Michael fed Dean and petted him soothingly, whispering now and again into his ear and alternating his attention between his Sub and his daughter on his other side. Kat crawled into Michael’s lap and ate off his plate. That Michael allowed her to stay during a meal while he was Domming with his Sub below him, even if he had chosen a simple dynamic of casual interplay, proved Michael was no more immune to the Rut-scent than anyone else. Not a one of them was behaving entirely like themselves. Maybe Sam.

Maybe Dean?

“Everyone knows their responsibilities today?” Cas asked blithely. “Gabriel, you’re to meet with the staff this morning to delegate duties. Whatever the maids need help with is your job. The laundry, I believe, needs attention. Michael, please confirm with Dean that he has all the information he needs to collect the Andersons from the airport. And Michael, Kevin needs you at the lab at nine o’clock sharp. Do not be late.”

“Understood, Alpha.”

“Sam, have you settled up with my brat?”

Sam chuckled. “Yes, Alpha. If you have time at lunch, I’d like to discuss Dean’s fall with you and him – and with Michael if he’s got time. Whatever you did last night, sir, I’m not sure it worked. I have some concerns.”

“Be in my office at eleven-thirty, Samuel. I’ll have Dean and Michael there. I want to hear your input.” Cas swallowed a final bite and then thanked Tony who was busy chopping vegetables for a light summer soup. “If that’s everything,” Cas concluded. “You are all dismissed. Have a good day. Please notify me before seven this evening if you need anything from me before I lock myself in. Michael, I leave in thirty minutes. Please release Dean in time to join me.”

“Yessir.”

Cas swept from the room without looking back, headed to his office to begin reviewing emails. The room released a collective breath. Kate had her lower lip in her teeth as she shared a look with Jess. “He’s going to work like that?” she asked no one in particular.

“God help them all,” Kali agreed, catching herself wiping Gabe’s chin and casting a puzzled look at her napkin. Gabe leaned over and kissed her cheek.

“Wanna play ‘Littles’ with me later?” he teased. “I make a pretty good baby.”

“Absolutely not,” Kali replied.

***************

Castiel wreaked havoc on The Facility. The staff and clientele were far less prepared for his scent than his own Pack, and his scent-blocker was insufficient to the challenge. But Cas persevered. Billie refused to meet with him in person. She banned him from her office after one whiff and met with him virtually instead. Only Billie had standing enough to make such a demand though, so the rest of his meetings carried on as usual. Benny offered more than once to drive him home. Bobby held his nose through the entirety of his report, huffing through his mouth and ignoring Castiel’s irritation. The remaining policy decisions for the new wing’s operation were finalized at a record pace with almost no argument, unsurprisingly all falling along the lines Cas most preferred.

Max trembled, crumpling his meeting agenda in a white-knuckle fist and palming his crotch below the table.

And Monroe Styne.

It would have been laughable to watch him fidget if it hadn’t been blatant and ethically gray manipulation of a subordinate. Cas didn’t care. He issued his final instructions and warnings with bullet-point efficiency and indisputable authority, and then he sent his emissary on his way, charging Bobby to keep him to heel with a flame sparking behind his red eyes that Bobby knew better than to challenge.

Castiel stalked through the hallway leaving mayhem in his wake. Finally, late in the morning, he slipped into Kevin’s observation booth, and the research techs all jumped to their feet in alarm. Before them, on the other side of the one-way glass, Michael and an Ozzie volunteer sat close together with electrodes attached to their heads and bare chests, talking but not touching.

“Sir!” Kevin almost yelped. “I didn’t know you were coming. Are you…sure you should be here today?”

“Relax, folks. I won’t stay long. Please carry on. I’m only here to observe. How is he doing?” Cas nodded toward the window to draw Kevin’s attention back to his experiment.

“Um. He’s…uh…yeah…it’s…he’s showing indications that…I mean…he seems to have access to both sides just like we suspected.” Kevin gathered himself with some effort, snuffling a little to clear his nose. “Michael and Stacey both register being able to sense the zeta waves. That’s from the neural harmonic that all Omegas feel. He’s talked her into Sub-space. It would be easier if he could touch her, Sir.”

“No,” Cas replied calmly, and Kevin flinched. “No touching. Dean was very clear on that.”

“Right. Yessir. Sorry.”

“Please continue,” Cas prompted.

“Of course. Right. So, they’re both Omega, so sensing zeta waves is a given for them both. You see the sensors we’ve placed at different ranges throughout the lab? Those mark the growing diameter Michael’s able to force her aura to expand to. So far, he’s widened it to five-point-two meters, skewed toward _his_ center of gravity. That Ozzie is wide open on just his voice. I can’t imagine what he does to Dean’s aura. Or what you could do for that matter, Sir. I would love to put you and April in this lab setup. We’d probably need a bigger room to measure the expansion of your mate’s zeta radius.”

Cas shuffled some papers on the desk before him, skimming Kevin’s preliminary readings and experiment parameters. “We’re not discussing me, beta. And no one but Michael is an option. Please stick to the point. Tell me what you see from Michael.”

Kevin blushed and stammered, fumbling. “R…right. God, I’m sorry. I did…didn’t mean anything. No offense…”

“None taken,” Cas replied casually. “The data?”

“Yes.” Kevin regrouped. “Michael is also showing other indications that we predicted he’d have, that he’s got a capacity to _manipulate_ the zeta waves. Our hypothesis is that all Doms can do that. The difference from other Doms being that he can actually sense – or see – what he’s handling. Being Omega lets him _feel_ where the strands congregate. …or see, or smell, or whatever. We don’t know yet which sense Omegas use, only that they can tell where the waves are densest. And being a Dominant lets him grab hold of the waves and play with them. Sir, he’s a perfect Dominant. What other Doms have to learn to do blindly – even you, Sir, no offense – Michael does with a complete palette in front of him. He doesn’t guess about anything. He can see exactly what he’s doing.”

“That’s a big leap, beta. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He told you he can touch the zeta waves?” Cas asked, peering into the room. Michael’s face was millimeters from the Ozzie’s. Her eyes were closed. She bore a blissful expression. Her chest heaved, and her nipples were erect. Michael whispered rapidly, his lips almost brushing the curve of her ear.

He was sex incarnate, and Cas had to look away for a moment.

“No, Sir, not in so many words. He uses phrases like ‘I can feel what I’m doing’ and ‘I just know’, but he can’t verbalize what that means. But look, we’ve got eye line trackers on him, and we’re correlating the shift of his attention around the room with what the zeta sensors pick up. We’re tracking his output with hers, and they match in a way that no other pairing ever has before. I don’t know if he’s moving his own aura to the same space hers occupies. More likely, he’s pulling hers to him. He’s massaging her aura to…well, in a way…to mate with his. Not like a Mating, of course, not exactly,” Kevin demurred carefully, “but he’s got her aura overlapped perfectly with his, and they’re pulsing as one aura right now. Michael’s moving her zeta waves however he wants, to make her feel whatever he wants her to feel. I’ve never seen anything like this, Alpha. Not even you can do what he’s doing.”

“How do your sensors distinguish whose aura is whose?” Cas asked.

“They don’t,” Kevin admitted. “But initially, before Sub-space is achieved, we see a figure eight pattern around both subjects with each aura centered around its owner, no more than half a foot in radius. A good Dom can expand a Sub’s aura to…oh, a meter and a half is about standard. But the figure eight shape remains static. With Michael, we see both auras conjoined into one overlapping oval that pulses from side to side. And the movement tracks with Michael’s eye line, not Stacey’s”

“Stacey’s eyes are closed,” Cas pointed out. “She doesn’t have an eye line.”

“Damnit,” Kevin muttered. He pressed a button on his panel, and a faint click sounded in the room. The Ozzie’s eyes shot open. “I keep forgetting to watch for that.”

“Sir?” Robbie spoke up from his desk near the back. “I need to be excused for a minute. Please.”

Kevin nodded absently and waved him out. All three of the other techs fled with him, leaving the door ajar. Cas raised a judgmental brow and then closed the door behind them.

“You’ll have to excuse them, Sir. Sorry, but your scent, it’s, um, … … powerful.”

Castiel sighed. “Apologies, Kevin. I’ll let you get back to your work. Do please forward your raw data to me once this morning’s session is complete.”

“Yes, Sir. I will. We’re nearly done. And, hey, I’ve been thinking. If Michael can see a Sub’s aura, then he can probably also see his own. I know Tertiary waves are different from Secondary, but all auras have a zeta component. It would explain a lot about how Michael is his own Top. An Omega who isn’t a Dom can sense auras, but their fingers go right through the strands. They can’t wield anything. And a Sub who isn’t Omega can’t do either. But put an Omega’s senses with a Dom’s ability to handle zeta energy…If that’s really what’s happening, and I think it is, … … There’s a hefty zeta component to Omega auras even if the subject isn’t Submissive. It’s what all Bottoms share, even though they get there by different routes. Michael can see his own aura, Alpha, I’m sure of it. At least echoes of it. And since he’s a Dominant, he can take hold of the individual strands of energy and do whatever he wants with them.”

Cas stroked the side of his jaw with his eyes on the ceiling, thinking. “Only Omegas can sense zeta waves,” he mused. “We knew that already. But you’re telling me that only Dominants can manipulate them? How do you know?”

Kevin smacked his lips and began a furious shuffling of his notes. “We’ve been on the cusp of this for ages, Sir. It’s hard to test because while our sensors can tell us where the waves are in the lab, none of our test subjects have ever shown any ability to sense them well enough to indicate there’s any purpose to the way they apply force. Doms work blind. But really practiced Doms have learned to predict how zeta waves coalesce. Through…trial and error, I guess. There’s always a lot of random, ineffective motion to what Dominants do with the waves. But the thing is, none of our non-Dominant Top subjects ever move the waves with the kind of directness Doms do. It’s more like a ripple, like an upset in the surface. Alphas operate on an entirely different frequency, Sir. Put an alpha in this room, and they may as well be trying to corral sound waves for all the good it does them. Alphas don’t work zeta waves. They work back brain synapses and Claim-bonds. They might get an Omega’s aura moving, but they do it indirectly. Do you see? Michael doesn’t have to work indirectly. He’s moving it with his mind, and he’s doing it on purpose. It _looks_ like the same kind of motion other Doms create but without any flailing.”

Cas watched Michael’s hand twitch, clearly longing to touch the girl sitting before him. Michael’s face was a study in concentration and power. Whatever he was doing, it was intentional. That much was clear.

“You, sir, you do it too. All Doms do it. The difference is efficiency. Michael doesn’t waste any motion. There’s no flailing. There’s no hesitation. He goes right for the strands of aura and picks them out like he can literally see them. Which he can. Because he’s Omega. “

Cas shook his head, skeptical. “Dominants may move zeta waves, but I see no clear evidence they do it intentionally.”

“No but look. It’s logic,” Kevin countered. “Doms _can_ move them, even if they don’t know they’re doing it. But what if they _did_ know they were doing it? What if they could see or _feel_ what they were touching? Omegas can see auras. Dominants can manipulate auras. Michael is both. It stands to reason that he wouldn’t have to do it blindly like the rest of you do because he can see what he’s doing.”

Cas frowned. “Moving zeta waves is _incidental_ to how Dominants achieve authority over their Subs, not instrumental…”

Kevin scrambled for his notes again, nodding vehemently. “I used to think so too. Right? We all did. But then I watched Michael. I’ve got it here somewhere. There’s a one-to-one correlation… It’s causative, I’m telling you. I just need to track him with more subjects. We’re close, Alpha. I’m sure of it.”

“No, we can’t make assumptions. We need to prove it. This isn’t proof, Kevin.”

Kevin sneezed and then cleared his throat. “Sir, I have to see him with an alpha-Sub. There’s always a chance that his Ozzie there is helping clue him in to what’s happening. They could form a harmonic feedback loop, even without a Claim-bond between them. I need to test him with an alpha-Sub – and a beta-Sub, for that matter. We have to blind the Submissive. An Ozzie can see what he’s doing.”

In the room, a wave of chill bumps spread down the Ozzie’s arms. Michael blew gently down her shoulder, and she shivered.

Cas sighed. Dean was not going to be happy.

“I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, run this experiment in triplicate.”

“Yes, Sir. We’ve got Michael scheduled three weeks in a row. Always the same day of the week and time of day. I’ve pulled three Ozzies with near identical ratings. If I could sequester Michael, that would be better, but…I know. That’s not going to happen.”

“No, that’s not going to happen,” Castiel agreed. He watched for another moment and then turned to go. “Thank you, Kevin. Please give my apologies to your team. I know I’m quite the disruption at the moment. It couldn’t be helped.”

“It’s not a problem, Sir. They’ll be back after they clear their senses. I’ll shoot the data to you as soon as I get it. Dean too?”

“Yes, please. Include Dean in all correspondence that has anything to do with Michael.” Cas aborted an impulse to shake Kevin’s hand, choosing an awkward abrupt exit instead. In the hall, all four technicians emerged from the nearest Blue Door far calmer than they went in, the last still tucking her shirttail in. Cas nodded to them and turned to walk the opposite way, thinking hard. He’d needed to play the skeptic in front of his lead researcher to keep from tainting the outcome, but Cas had been convinced for a long time that the combination of Omega and Dominant meant something special. Watching Kevin suss it out was validating and exciting.

If Dominants could be taught somehow to sense the presence of zeta waves the way Omegas did, there might be a way for them to affect a Sub’s headspace without the need to touch, simply by manhandling their auras. It offered the first real glimmer of a chance to balance Submissives without paddling or any other means of inflicting physical pain. The therapy options that that would allow for disabled Subs, alone, merited following this trail as far as they could take it. It could be the breakthrough Cas had been looking for. Of course, there were more ifs to the question than answers yet. Could the same thing work for Balancing Omegas? Plus, if Dominants _could_ learn to sense what they manipulated, then surely some of them would have chanced upon the secret on their own by now. What good was this discovery if only Omega-Doms could make use of it? For his own experience, Cas had never experienced anything that he could call sensing a zeta wave. He could smell people’s headspaces, in a way – ‘smell’ being the closest approximate sense he knew to put to what he felt from people. And he understood Michael’s struggle to verbalize it. There simply weren’t words for any of this.

But Michael _could_ self-Release. That wasn’t a mistake. It was purposeful. Something about him was different. And he could wield ‘The Voice’ powerfully enough to compel a sea of angry strangers. Michael’s assertive confidence had really come alive in the last couple of years. He knew exactly who he was, and he walked with his chin high, his shoulders back, and a softness to his gait that let his knees hit the ground whenever he needed them to. 

Adding Michael to Castiel’s public crusade was working. The public adored him. They hung on his every wink, and they believed him when he spoke earnestly about his experience as an Omega. He was as revolutionary a voice in the movement as Cas had been himself, years ago. With an Alpha-Dom, an alpha-Sub, and now an Omega-Dom speaking the same message from multiple directions, the message was triangulated powerfully, and it was driving momentum that filled every facility in the country. They had inertia on their side for the first time. Michael’s designations and his charisma, his moral compass, his passion, were almost enough to convert Cas to Universism. Nothing in his life – aside from his husband – had ever seemed so much a gift from the Universe.

As Michael worked his magic in the lab with a bouquet of electrode leads trailing off his body – and an ironic probe lodged in his channel – he became more and more the gift that kept on giving. Cas felt the hourglass running low on sand though. He had so much to accomplish yet before his five year tenure ran out as Operational Director. There were milestones he needed to reach, milestones he trusted to no one else.

Cas understood Kevin’s enthusiasm. It felt like they were on the edge of an epiphany big enough to be a tipping point. They were getting closer every day. Michael was unique, but he wasn’t magical. Whatever specific combination of attributes allowed him these special abilities, there was a rational explanation that Cas was determined to adapt outside of Michael’s own special mix. If Michael could do it, then there had to be a way for others to do it too. There had to be.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. That would be Dean. He was late to his own lunch meeting.

He thumbed his screen on and smiled at the text.

_“Hey, Thursday! Awaiting UR pleasure, my liege.”_

Cas chuckled at his brat. _“OMW”_ he texted back with a flirty wink-emoji and then added, _“And don’t call me Thursday!”_

Cas understood Sam’s concerns about Dean’s stability, but he didn’t share them. He’d spent the night with his nose pressed against Dean’s scent glands, and there was no hint of an imbalance. More likely, what Sam was sensing was Dean’s discomfort at having his frailties held up to the light. Dean was still a brat, even when fully balanced, and Cas suspected he didn’t feel remorse at having taken a swing at his brother, nor of connecting. That divide, accepting a punishment without feeling any remorse, could manifest in all kinds of ways, many of which might look like a Tertiary fall.

Cas suspected that Dean’s wolf craved a consequence for his misbehavior outside and above its need to fall.

“The contract wing reported a True-Mate Trigger this morning,” Dean informed Cas upon the Alpha’s arrival. “That’s four for the quarter.”

Cas’ brows went up in surprise. “One of our contractors?”

“No, two clients checking in. Betas. Both locals, but only one a regular.”

“And? Are they secure? Are there any concerns?” Cas asked.

Sam spoke from Castiel’s office sofa. “Everything’s fine, sir. No complications. Scent-room readings show a powerful match, and the deal’s done without injury. They’re Mated and healthy. Social services is working out the notifications, checking for unexpected Pack entanglements. We don’t foresee any problems.”

“Then unless you want me to send flowers, I don’t see that this is an issue that needs my personal involvement.” Cas moved toward his husband, easing the sharpness of his tone with an arm extended for an embrace. “Michael’s just finishing up with Kevin and his team. He’s on his way,” Cas said after pulling Dean in for a kiss. Sam stood up. He rubbed his nose vigorously for a moment and cleared his throat. Cas noticed the beta’s discomfort. “Right. Apologies, Sam. I am aware I’m unpleasant to be around today.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dean grinned, pressing his nose into Castiel’s throat. “You smell incredible. Wanna sneak off and do something about it?” Dean draped himself over his husband’s back, purring deep in his throat.

Cas laughed and leaned back to kiss him again. “Yes, I do, Dean, but that will have to wait. Busy day, what with Matings and ex-cult leaders shipping off and Max shitting himself over his grand opening...”

“Spoilsport.”

“Can we at least go outside?” Sam asked desperately. “The smokers’ table is preferable to being cooped up in here. Pardon, Alpha, but it’s really getting strong. I don’t know how you’re still dressed.”

“Yes, let’s convene elsewhere. How about the dog park? It’s walking distance,” Cas suggested stupidly before Dean growled a possessive negation in his ear and tightened his grip on Cas’ chest. “Okay,” he laughed. “Not in public. Where, then? We could co-opt one of the H/R rooms if there are any free. Or a scent-room. Those have the strongest vents.”

“Follow me,” Dean directed, tugging Cas by the hand. He beelined a path out the back of The Facility, catching Michael hurrying toward them, and he ignored Sam’s bitching as he picked his way down a nearly invisible path into the sparse woods to his favorite clearing under a particular tree.

“What is this?” Sam asked, looking around. “Dean, it’s chigger season. We’ll probably all get Lyme disease.”

“Lyme disease comes from ticks, Sam, not chiggers,” Michael corrected with his fingers tangled with Dean’s and his pupils enormous at the proximity to a Rutting Alpha. He followed Dean to the shade of the tree and sat in the V of Dean’s legs with Dean propped against the trunk of the only tree in the clearing.

Dean piped up. “Dude, this is where I Mated my Omega. Show some goddamned reverence. Do I go denigrating your freezer section at the Piggly-Wiggly? Sheesh!”

“You’re a jerk, Dean.”

“And you’re a …”

“Knock it off, both of you!” Castiel interrupted, very much an Alpha. “Sam, we have limited time, less now that we’ve wasted fifteen minutes of it hiking into the woods. Please, ask whatever it is you needed to ask.”

“Dean says you two discovered a new way to manage his falls, and I want to know what it is. I think I deserve to be in on the change since I’m part of the team that keeps him stable,” Sam asserted, seeming to expect to be politely cut out of the process and proactively refusing to allow that.

Cas scratched the back of his neck, standing in the shade and sweating. “I agree. You have a right to know what’s going on. Dean?”

“What?”

Cas blinked at his husband for a moment and then prompted him. “Would you mind filling Sam in, please?”

Dean narrowed his eyes at Cas. “You get sloppy when you’re in Rut,” he noted. “That was blatant.”

“I’m not in Rut!” Cas snapped rudely.

Dean quirked an eyebrow. “You kinda are, Alpha. I hate to be the one to point it out, but you’ve Tripped. You’re torturing everyone just being at work today, yourself most of all.”

“I cannot leave yet,” Cas objected, looking stricken. “People are depending on me.”

“We’ll survive, Alpha,” Michael added gently. “Billie knows what she’s doing.”

“Would you please just talk to Sam so we can get in out of this infernal heat?” Cas said with a crackle in his voice that pinked Dean’s cheeks.

Dean bit the inside of his cheek and glanced up at his brother. It wasn’t a fair demand. Cas was testing Dean’s response to their play last night, checking to see how Dean digested it, and he was doing it publicly. It wasn’t fair. But Dean knew there was no reasoning with the man while he was like this. “Sam, last night I was on the verge of a fall. I know I didn’t look it, but I knew it was coming so I kenneled my wolf over the past couple of weeks. I was letting my front-brain provoke little incidents now and then to see if I could spark something fiery enough to flame up and feed my wolf into without trashing the Pack.”

“You punched me to elicit a fall?” Sam checked with his fingers tracing his bruised cheek carefully.

“I punched you because you were being a meddlesome little bitch,” Dean shot back.

“No, Dean,” Cas interjected calmly. “Explain it to him.”

Dean ground his teeth and then refocused. “Yes. I thought if I torqued Cas up mad enough, I could slide my wolf out of its cave just in time for the grand finale without really breaking anything. When he showed up to dinner nearly in Rut and stiff as a corpse, it felt like the right time to knock his cap off. Of course, you had to butt in right when you did, so I didn’t actually succeed in getting there without hurting anyone, but it was pretty close, wouldn’t you say?”

“All right, fine,” Sam said. “If I had stayed out of it and let you bellow yourself hoarse, then what? What’s radically different? What did you do to resolve it? Cause, honestly? It doesn’t seem resolved to me.”

Dean licked his lips and rubbed his sweaty palms on Michael’s thighs. “Just. Hear me out, Sammy. He didn’t strap me like he normally would for that blowout shit. Cas, he went the opposite direction. He let me have a really sweet, hot-as-fuck scene instead. And, man, it worked. I bawled my eyes out. Came so hard I nearly blacked out. It was like a catharsis.”

“And that’s it?” Sam checked. His skepticism dripped from his tone. “Great sex took you through a fall?”

“Weird, right?” Dean agreed with his gaze following the rise and fall of Michael’s back.

“Dean,” Cas corrected stiffly.

“What?!” Dean spat. “Isn’t that what happened?” He raised his eyes to his husband in challenge, red now in his irritation.

“Whoa,” Sam said. He raised his hands in a placation and backed up a few steps. “Dean, what are you doing? Don’t rile him.”

But Cas only sighed, going lax in his stance. “Relax, Sam. I’m not going to bite anyone. Dean’s annoyed that I wanted to explore his reaction indirectly by making him explain it to you before I had the chance to talk it over with him.”

“You get pissed at me when I pull shit like that, Cas,” Dean pointed out. “I get the belt for manipulation like that. You don’t get to do it just because you’re the big dog, not if you want me to do better.”

“You’re right,” Cas acknowledged. “I’m sorry.”

“Damn straight, I’m right,” Dean muttered.

At the same time, Cas turned to Sam. “Look, we need to talk this over in private. I promise you’ll get the full skinny when we’re through with our discussion. You are an important member of Dean’s support network. And you have my gratitude for everything you’ve done, including putting yourself in harm’s way when Dean lost control last night.”

“I didn’t lose control,” Dean mumbled quietly. Cas shot him an annoyed look.

Sam sighed. “I don’t need all the details, fellas. All I really need to know is if it worked; if Dean’s solidly on the far side of this round, because frankly, he still seems stuck as a brat to me.”

_“You’re_ a brat, _Samantha,”_ Dean grumbled.

Michael smacked the outside of Dean’s thigh. “Would you cut it out?” he chided. “You’re not helping.”

“He’s pissing me off!” Dean griped back.

“I think we can all tell that, now would you shut up and let Cas explain?” Michael implored.

_ “Let Cas explain…,”_ Dean mocked.

Cas chuckled. “Ah, my brat. I know you’re horny. And I will not leave you languishing for long. I promise. There is no need for a provocation right now. Let’s stick to the topic.” Warm affection shone in his eyes.

Dean grunted and lowered his head again, grumbling under his breath. Michael reached his arms behind his head and pulled Dean’s face closer so he could nuzzle it fondly and whisper to him.

Cas picked it up. “Sam, what we did last night went beyond mere scening. I need to discuss that with Dean before I speak about it in detail with you, but suffice it to say, by all indications I know how to measure, he is safely on the other side of that exigence now. He smells and behaves balanced. And he...”

“Balanced?” Sam blurted. “He’s mouthing off like he’s desperate for a strap!”

“I dislike being interrupted, Samuel. And yes, Dean is exhibiting behaviors meant to elicit a stern reprimand. What he isn’t, though, is unbalanced.” Cas ignored Sam’s blushing apology for the interruption and instead, turned to Dean. “Dean, my love, tell me. Can you see your wolf right now?”

“My wolf? You mean the sleek, sexy fucker who likes to stir up trouble? Nah, he must be asleep or off hunting or some… … … Oh! Oh, shit! Seriously?”

Cas and Michael both laughed. Sam rolled his eyes. “So, this thing you did last night. Whatever it was. It worked? My black eye is the only collateral damage? He’s off the hook for a few months?”

Cas nodded with his eyes fixed on Dean’s. Dean smiled abashedly and shrugged.

“You’re sure?”

“Sorry about your face, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam, jerk.”

“Bitch.”

“Fine. I have work to do. I hope you enjoy chigger bites,” Sam muttered over his shoulder as he began to pick his way back to the path.

“What crawled up his ass?” Dean wondered before fixing his lips to the curve of Michael’s neck where it flattened into shoulder, and he began to suck. Michael threw his head back and moaned.

“All right, boys, it’s just us.” Castiel sat down, looking absurd wearing a suit in the grass. The heat of the day was brutal, even in the shade, and his Rut added to that, sending rivulets of sweat down his temples and the back of his neck. “Let’s talk.”

Dean sniffed judgmentally, releasing Michael’s shoulder, sitting back into the tree with a disaffected expression, and clamped his mouth shut.

Cas sighed. “All right, fine. What do you want me to say?”

Dean leaned up again, engaging and using Michael’s hips to give himself a brace. “I want you to go ahead and let me have it. I know you’re having kittens up there in your noggin, and we’re just gonna go in circles until you spit it all out. So? Lemme have it, man. What are you beating yourself up over? Cause me? I’m good.”

“You’re good,” Cas repeated. “Well then, what more is there to worry about? If you’re good, then I’m good. Case closed.”

“Nuh-unh,” Dean broke in. “Not by half, man. Seriously? You’re gonna make me drag it out of you?”

“Dean, everything I did last night was to try to find a safe path for you through your fall. If you don’t have any concerns about how we did that, then who am I to plant anxieties where you aren’t feeling any?” Cas shifted up to his knees and then rocked back to his feet to pace. He stripped his suit jacket off and folded it over his arm, leaving his white, cotton shirt drenched and translucent.

“This isn’t about me, Cas. This is about you being too chickenshit to take the Alpha mantle that’s yours by right.”

Cas rounded on him in shock. “What did you say to me?”

“What are you gonna do about it?” Dean fired right back, finding his breath harder to catch as both alphas’ eyes reddened. Michael bravely held his place, rhythmically massaging Dean’s ankles and rocking slightly with his head down.

Castiel stared, huffing himself to a furious pitch, and then just as suddenly let it all go with an enormous exhale that took the wind out of his sails. He rubbed his temples and turned his back on his husband. “I broke our contract, Dean. I can’t undo it, and I can’t fix it.”

“There you go,” Dean agreed. “Keep going.”

“That contract is _everything_ to me!” Cas mourned.

“Dude, that contract isn’t worth its weight in butt wipe. It’s just words, Cas. Throw the damn thing out and fucking _own_ me like I keep asking you to do. What you did last night was incredible!”

“You don’t mean that,” Cas told him.

“The hell I don’t,” Dean argued. “Look, I know we get tangled in it sometimes. And I whine and complain over you putting a toe over the edge. But don’t you see? If we re-set our framework, take out all the frilly rules, let you be yourself. Cas, I want you to be _yourself!_ I wanna know _that_ guy. I wanna roast over your flames, man. Stop treating me like an equal and fucking _own_ me for fuck’s sake!”

Cas snarled and grimaced, advancing on the couple beneath the tree. “That’s absurd, Dean! I won’t do it! You don’t know what you’re asking of me! You don’t know what he’s like! You _don’t_ want this, and what’s more, _I_ don’t want this! I get a say in this contract too! A free-for-all is NOT what I want. It’s not what I’ve ever wanted!”

“Yeah, well, whatever. You and your say can go cry over a broken contract all you want. I have no problem with it.”

Michael licked his lips and chanced a peek at Castiel. “If I can ask? What exactly was it that broke the contract? Was it me? Was it about fucking unprotected? Because I’m the one who asked for that.”

Cas scrubbed a hand across his forehead and stalked away a few paces before turning back to face them. “Michael, I don’t know whether Dean has told you. Some time ago, he told me he has possessive feelings toward you and that he would rather I didn’t penetrate you sexually without his permission. We wrote it into our contract. Our stipulations allow for single incident permission granted on a case-by-case basis at Dean’s discretion, but it’s also codified in our contract that no changes be permitted _during_ a scene. Asking Dean for permission to fuck you once the scene commenced was moot. It doesn’t count as consent. Dean’s too suggestible a Sub to rely on his acquiescence once his headspace tips. And the point to the way I set last night’s scene up was that breaking the contract _was_ the point. I manipulated Dean, and I used you and your libido. I needed him to feel that there might be nothing I wouldn’t do right then. I needed him to feel everything he knew to trust pulled up and scattered.” Cas looked at Dean. “I needed him to feel utterly vulnerable.”

Michael frowned and turned to look back at Dean.

Dean met his eye and then stammered a lame, embarrassed, muffled reply, blushing.

“What was that?” Michael asked.

Dean sighed heavily. “Yes! All right! Yes! I felt vulnerable as hell and the thing is, that feeling? Like he had _ALL_ the power and I had none? Like he might actually do anything to me, and I would ride along on his tail lapping the drippings up as I go? It was the free-est I’ve ever felt in my life. So, look, Cas…” Dean looked beyond Michael and addressed Castiel, “…just, just let me have this. Please, Alpha? I swear you won’t regret it. Hell, keep the contract somewhere for yourself as a guide to what I jam to the hardest and what really pisses me off. _Use_ it against me, for fuck’s sake! But please give me this.”

“Oh, Dean,” Cas said mournfully. “That wasn’t what last night was about. I can’t. I can’t do it. The contract stays or we don’t scene. That’s always been a hard limit, my love.”

“Then what the hell, Castiel?” Dean clambered to his feet and stepped over Michael. “No, seriously. What the hell? It’s a hard limit? Except it’s not, because you broke it on purpose. So, it’s a hard limit for me? Only for me? I got to really, truly freefall exactly once! ONCE! And that’s the end of it?”

Castiel’s eyes reddened fully. He drew himself up and stood adamant before Dean’s outrage. “That’s enough! This is ridiculous. I’m not having this conversation with you. Not like this. I admit that I bent the contract, and that was anything but fair to you – to you and Michael, both. And I am prepared to deal with whatever insecurities that decision may kick up for all of us. But, Dean, I _will not_ tear up that contract. That is a hard no, and as I am your Alpha, you can take that to the bank. What you want is a child’s fantasy, not real life. You want to fly without a tether? Well, I can’t give you that! I won’t! I’m not willing to risk either of us enough to try. And I’m sick of having to say it! Talk Michael into it if you want to. Maybe he’ll give you what you think you want! I’ll be there to unscramble the pieces when you’re done.”

Dean fumed. “You want this, Cas! I know you do! You want it as bad as I do!”

“No, Dean! _You_ want it. Not me. And the thing you’re so angry about is that you keep telling me to take the reins and BE Alpha, but what you really want is for me to do it the way _YOU_ want me to! But that’s NOT what I want, so that’s _NOT_ what we’re going to do! We’re doing this MY way, and that means the contract stays, the safewords stay, and you can _obey_ me or face the consequences! I don’t want to hear another word about it. The subject is _closed!_ Do you understand me?”

Castiel glowered for a moment and then stormed off through the overgrowth, shrugging back into his jacket, leaving Dean slack jawed in the clearing and Michael sitting forlorn by the tree.

“For the record, Dean. I’m not going to play without a contract either.” Michael stood up and brushed off the seat of his pants.

“Jesus, Michael, who’s asking you to?” Dean’s anger fairly dripped from every pore. He was embarrassed and chagrined, humiliated, ashamed, frustrated beyond measure.

“Hey,” Michael said gently. “Flip your eyes back to green for me. I need to see you, baby.”

“I don’t understand anything, man,” Dean told his mate, feeling lost. “He’s lying through his teeth. I know he is. He wants this as much as I do. We keep inching closer and closer and closer to the real thing, but at the last second, he keeps putting the training wheels back on. He’ll do the Pack Alpha thing. He’ll do the Top thing. He’ll do Pack Discipline like he was built for it. He watches over me when I’m so screwed in the head I can’t piss straight. But he won’t trust me enough to let go where I need it the most.”

“Dean, sweetheart, it’s not you he doesn’t trust. Don’t you know that?”

“That’s just an excuse, Michael. It’s a stupid, tired, overused, lame-ass excuse. Fuck it. And fuck Castiel! And you know what? He _does_ trust himself. He knows exactly who he is. He knows exactly what he’s capable of.”

“Well, yeah. That’s the point, Dean. He knows he’s capable of ripping your body in half.” Michael kept his distance.

“Bullshit! That man would _never_ put one hair on his head further than he means to. He would _never_ take it too far with me. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. He knows exactly where that line is, and he’s dying to ride that edge with me. Michael, I… I don’t want to think that last night is the only time I’m ever going to feel that again. And he didn’t even DO anything, man! He teased it, and he made like the training wheels were off, and all he did was fuck my mate! Are you fucking serious?!”

“Dean, come on, man, take a breath. You’re spinning right now. I get that. Right now isn’t the best time to be trying to make a choice this big anyway. You just had a fall last night. Give it some time.”

“Don’t patronize me, damnit! I’m not a child. I’m not making shit up off the cuff. And this really doesn’t concern you anyway. Fuck!” Dean took off stalking down the path, following the direction Cas had gone, back toward the buildings, even larger and more complex with their shiny new adolescent training wing occupying the western side where the employee parking lot used to be.

“Lord, give me strength,” Michael sighed to the sky before trudging after him. “Dean, wait up! Wait for me, damnit! I haven’t told you about my lab session yet!”

“You can tell me tonight,” Dean shouted over his shoulder. Michael jogged and caught up.

“We have company tonight,” Michael reminded him.

“No, the pups have company tonight. Kathleen and Jerry don’t give a fig about us. And Cas and April will be busy making more pups. Everyone else is gonna make themselves scarce, just watch. It’ll just be you and me and Darius Cain.”

“Sheesh, you’re cranky,” Michael huffed.

Dean turned to him and halted, forcing Michael to a stop. “Look, do something for me, would you? Hang with me during this cycle of theirs. Don’t join in. Even when they unlock and invite us. Michael, do this for me. Please? Sit it out, just this once.” Dean’s eyes were pinched and pained. He searched Michael’s face.

“Of course, Dean. I’m your mate and your Omega. I go where you go. But would you at least leave the door open to change your mind? You might not; I get that. I’m asking you not to make any big announcements that might feel tough to walk back if you thaw some between now and then. Just keep an open mind. That’s all I ask.”

Dean scowled. “An open mind? Like you’re doing about April’s marriage proposal?” Dean asked sourly. He raised his eyebrows and pinned Michael with staunch green eyes.

“How did you know about that?” Michael was hurt, and he let his emotion pass unhindered through his bonds, blinking at the blindside.

“Everyone knew, apparently, except me.”

Michael let his head drop backward. He closed his eyes and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Dean, what the fuck? Can we just talk without all the bullshit? I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I just needed the right moment. Don’t drag me into your beef with him and make out like there’s some big Pack conspiracy to make you unhappy. I need you for this, man. I need my alpha. I have no idea what to do here. I know you’re mad, but you’re not mad at me. So if you want to talk about it now, stow your crap, and let’s talk about this thing with Pete in a way that isn’t going to make me want to shove your face in the garbage disposal.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dean dropped the alpha tension and turned on his heel. “Inside though. It’s hot as fuck out here.”

Once inside, Dean took Michael’s hand and dragged him to the lunchroom. Checking his watch, Michael realized they’d have to hustle if he were going to get a meal in him before he had to be at work for shift change at one.

“I don’t expect you to solve this for me, alpha,” Michael told Dean as they collected trays at the counter. “But I need your perspective. Cas and Pete both think I’m afraid to get married because I’ll turn into my Pop. But it’s more than that.” Michael waved at Charlie as she dumped her tray and tapped his ass in passing.

“Look, Michael. If it’s this hard to decide, then it seems like that answers the question for you.” Dean chose a cheeseburger. Michael selected a cobb salad. “Split an order of fries with me?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Dean zipped his employee ID card through the reader, and Michael led them toward an empty table. “She wants to get married,” Michael said as he slid onto the bench opposite his mate at the end of one of the long tables. He made short work of spreading dressing over his salad.

“What do _you_ want?” Dean replied, answering a question with a question.

“I want her to be happy.”

Dean leaned across the table, taking Michael’s wrist in his hand and stopping the progress of his fork. “Michael, what do _you_ want?”

Michael wrenched his wrist free and stabbed the greens with abandon. “How do you go from being an out-of-control prick to being entirely rational in less than five minutes?”

“Years of practice and a compartmentalized brain,” Dean told him. “I’m a brat, not a prick, and none of that was out of control. Answer the question.”

“I want her happy, Dean. That’s what I want.”

“Then marry her.” Dean picked up his burger and took an inordinately large bite.

“I’m not sure that’s going to make her happy,” Michael confided. “It’s what she wants right now because she likes who I am right now. But if we tie the knot, I’ll change. I know I will.”

Dean chewed and ripped open a ketchup packet to squirt all over the fries.

“Dude! That’s not how you ketchup! Make a puddle, damnit.” Michael watched helplessly while Dean drenched the fries in ketchup. “You’re making a mess! I’m not eating that.”

“Suit yourself,” Dean shrugged. “More for me.”

“I have to be at work in fifteen minutes,” Michael said while he chewed. “You’re supposed to be helping.”

“You’re worried you’ll change just because you two get married? Everyone changes, man. It’s inevitable. Doesn’t have to be away from your own self-image though. Write your own fucking script, man. Pick your own growth.”

“It’s not that simple, Dean. We’re complicated creatures, you and I. Pete is too. None of this is simple. And there are power-exchange dynamics hardwired into our brains, into our Pack, into that whole house. I’ll wake up one day, and she’ll be cooking me breakfast and worrying she left the bacon too floppy, and I’ll drag her for it. It’s the little things. It’ll start small, but it will build into something I can’t control.” Michael picked the good stuff off the top of his salad and merely stirred the rest.

“Seems like those things could happen even if you don’t get married,” Dean pointed out as he swallowed. “You two are together. You’re a couple. You have your own relationship separate from everyone else, and it’s as tight as a marriage already. You have to know that’s going to change over time whether there’s a ring or not. There’s no way you can stop or control every change, Michael. You can’t even predict how things might evolve over the years, much less control it all.” Dean took another big bite and spoke around his food as he chewed.

“The best you can do every day is the best you can do that day.” He swallowed and continued more clearly. “Some days are mundane; you know what I mean? You cook bacon and try to get it exactly right ‘cause you know how that person likes it. Someone serves you bacon and you decide whether to pitch a fit that’s it not crisp enough or to just eat it and say thanks because you care about their feelings. Some days are bigger than that. Like, the love of your life tells you she wants you for her husband. But it’s all the same thing, man. You take what you get each day, and you decide who you are, who you wanna be, who you want to be near, and how near you can let them get to you. You don’t get that many choices, really – just a couple each moment. There’s no scorebook keeping track except the people around you and how you make them feel. How you feel about them. And, man, if you don’t want to be your old man, then don’t. It’s literally that easy. You’re not in a coma here. No one’s taking away your ability to choose your actions for yourself. You tamed that monster in your gut all on your own with your Pop doing his damnedest to sabotage you every day. But you did right by yourself anyway. Man, that’s who you are. I can’t tell you whether to get married or not. But I can tell you that what you have with April is going to be tough either way. It’s not about a ring and a piece of paper. It’s about a commitment.”

Michael hung on every word. At the end, he grimaced and attacked his salad again. “I’m in it for the long haul, Dean. You know that. But why does she need to be just like everyone else? What does that prove?”

“Everyone else? Michael, how many wolves do you know who get married? It’s like ten percent of Mated couples and four percent of unMated couples. Something like that. Besides, you two live in the same house and share parenthood of the same pups, but none of that ties you to each other at all, not really. You’re only connected through your mates.”

“Yeah, that’s what Pete said.”

“And?” Dean stuffed a handful of fries into his mouth and waited for an answer.

“And I don’t know.”

“Your Pop really did a number on you, sport.”

“Yeah, looks like.”

“Hey, just…think about it, okay?” Dean set a hand on Michael’s and squeezed.

“You want this,” Michael cocked his head. “Why?”

“It’s like you said, man. I want you happy.” Dean spoke resolution into his bonds.

“I have to go.”

“Leave your tray. I’ll get it.”

“Thanks, Dean.”

“Love you too, Michael. Give me a kiss before you go.” Dean offered his cheek. Michael huffed, slapped his stern smolder into place and turned Dean’s head with a grip of his chin and kissed his lips. Dean’s eyes as he pulled away were captivatingly green. “Think about which would be worse,” Dean advised quietly enough that only Michael could hear. “Living the rest of your life fighting from turning into your Pop or living the rest of your life without being able to call her yours. What can you live with, Michael, and what can’t you live without?”

Once Michael was gone, Dean finished his lunch in a pensive fog. He cast a feeler or two toward Castiel, but the man wasn’t coherent enough to get a read on. Stupid bastard had no business being at work today anyway. Maybe his Rut was to blame for his stubborn self-control – he certainly had himself buttoned down tight. Maybe Dean was reading him wrong. But Dean’s wolf felt certain there was a chink in the Alpha’s armor. If he could just wedge a paw into just the right gap… Cas’ anger hadn’t been feigned though. Dean didn’t want to be a jerk. He just wanted…well, he wanted what he wanted. And his wolf insisted he fight for it.

What would it feel like to demand his Alpha’s attention and have those red eyes flare bright and hot at him instead of tamping down to cool blue reason? What would it feel like to bathe in Castiel’s rage outside of a fall? Could he provoke him to lose control? God, what would that feel like?

“You’re stinking up the mess hall, Winchester,” Meg told him with a rude shove to the back of his head. “Go fuck something and take a shower.”

“Go ride a porcupine, Lafitte!” Dean called back, using her Pack name instead of her Mated name just to piss her off.

She flipped him off over her shoulder and continued toward the exit.

Dean jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes and growled at himself. He sent his awareness down into his inner psyche, picturing a lineup of his designations in his head and fixing each of them with a stern glare. [Knock it off, all of you, or we’re not gonna be sitting for a week! Save it for the big man!] 

Dean consciously sloughed out of the hide of his wolf, scratched the bratty creature behind its ears and then nocked his head to send it off into the tree line in his mindscape. With a lifting of his torso and a straightening of his spine, Dean stepped back into his alpha. He stared down at his empty tray for a moment, finding his bearings, and then he cleared both trays, fist bumped one of his teachers on her way in, and went back to work with a spring in his step.

***************

Castiel gave up at one-thirty. He phoned his best friend. “Can you stand to be in your car with me long enough to get me home?”

_”Get your ass to the parking lot, brother. I’ll meet you there. We can roll the windows down,”_ Benny replied.

Once on the road, Cas asked, “Benny, would you keep a close eye on Dean for the rest of the week?” Castiel gripped his own knees to ground him from the sensations in his body. “I’ve pissed him off again, and I expect him to act out enough to earn an official reprimand. It would be best if that happens sooner rather than later. He’s ramping up hard. Someone needs to give him a barricade to run into, and I won’t be available.”

Benny grunted unhappily. “What’s Michael doing? Why not tap him?”

“That’s a touchy subject,” Cas grumbled. “Michael’s at ground zero of the issue between us. Dean’s reopened his campaign to throw out our contract and freehand our scenes. I cracked the door open on that last night. I didn’t think it through, and now it’s biting me in the ass.”

“Cas, you can’t do that with a Sub as wily as Dean. He’ll find a way to take a mile if you give him a millimeter.”

“I know. It was stupid. But it’s too late to cry over it now. I’m worried about leaving him for a couple of days. He needs a tight leash, and he needs it from an alpha. It’s really shitty timing. I’d take him into the H/R room with me but we’re nesting, Ben. My alpha doesn’t want anyone near its mate right now. Dean might actually get bit if he’s too close to her before we conceive. I have to isolate for the first two days.”

“You’re worried about hurting him?” Benny asked in disbelief. “About hurting Dean? This is Dean we’re talking about.”

Cas shot him an anxious look, and Benny whistled a long descending note.

Cas adjusted uncomfortably in his seat. “We’re in a tough spot. Now is not the time to lose my grip. He needs me solid and in control. We have this…thing…bubbling up between us, and the more I clamp down, the harder he rebels. I don’t know how to enforce my own will over him any stronger than I’m doing already, Benny. I set up the dynamics exactly how I want them, giving thought to what Dean needs as well as my own preferences, and he’s convinced I’m soft peddling the master/slave bit. He thinks I’m holding myself back. But damnit, Dean’s got his own image of how our relationship is meant to go down, and it isn’t mine. I’m at a loss, here, Benny. He wants me to step up and _’Be Alpha’_, trademark finger quotes and everything. That’s exactly what I’m doing. But since it doesn’t match the fantasy in his head, he thinks I’m lobbing him easy pitches.”

Benny turned in to the Winchester driveway and waited for the gate to swing open. He glanced at his sweating friend, flushed and itchy and miserable. “You need to get tough with him, Cassie. Stop reasoning with him. Stop explaining. That has always been your weakness where Dean’s concerned. You argue with him. You let him get under your skin. He’s begging you to put your boot on his neck, right? Well then do it. But do it your way, not his, and backhand him halfway across that oversized foyer of yours if he whines about it. He’s playing you Castiel. I’ll lay you good odds that he’s a model alpha at work the entire time you’re away on cycle leave. He’s got no reason to brat off if you’re not around … … unless he’s close to falling?” Benny pulled up by the garage door and put his car in park.

“No, he should be clear of a fall,” Cas told him with a frown.

“Hundred bucks says he doesn’t set a toe outta line while you’re out,” Benny prompted.

Cas looked at him and sighed. “Thanks for driving me home.”

Benny winked. “Andrea will be sending you flowers, no doubt, because now I have to go home and take care of this.” He indicated his lap.

“Tell her I said glad to be of service,” Cas added wryly as he climbed out of the car and tapped the roof.

April shot naked out of the front door, angling across the side lawn and into his arms. Benny chuckled as he scrubbed his nose and headed down the drive leaving all four windows down. He sent a voice-to-text message ahead to let his mate know he was on his way home. In his rearview mirror, he watched Castiel slam his mate against the sun-heated bricks of his stately Craftsman style manor and rock into her with his slacks at his ankles.

He could only hope his own relationship didn’t make him look as foolish as his best friend’s did. He loved Cas and Dean, both, but the idiots were just never going to figure each other out. They were endlessly entertaining, at least. Benny texted Sam from the walk to his own door that he was out for the rest of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I encourage show discussion if anyone needs to talk about it. I also encourage feedback on the story above. Tell me what you think. Holler at me about typos. Thanks for reading. 💝


	20. Friday, August 13, 2021

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a moment of 'Taking a Stand,' and everyone is claiming their own.
> 
> Billie Claims her domain and her Submissive. Fred claims his house back from Gabriel's incompetence. Dean claims his authority back from his mate. And Castiel claims everything, including his own bestial nature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Warnings for excess violence.
> 
> This one breaks some rules. Sometimes, to make omelets, you have to crack a few eggs. And sometimes to drive the point home through a stubborn skull, you have to soften it up a little.
> 
> I acknowledge that Castiel's presentation in this chapter owes its inspiration to bendingsignpost's latest, ["Dream Come True."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28071159) I read it, loved it, and couldn't get that Cas out of my head. There's a shameless copying of tone and purpose here. I tried to alter the actual language, but... yeah.
> 
> It's long again. 😉😘

NOW:

Billie strolled assertively through her domain, with its tall glass exterior, crystalline blocks sparking in the sun, and it’s sleek inner styling, checking in here and there to get a sense of the prevailing ambience of the place, its daily zeitgeist, if that was a thing. With Castiel out for his cycle, people’s moods might well be thrown out of whack. She lent a steadying hand in a couple of classrooms. She made a peremptory circle through the lunchroom, touching shoulders and chatting briefly, backing up a discipline situation that showed indications of needing support, wandered through the main lab. Things appeared stable overall. And Billie was pleased. The Facility was finally beginning to accept that Cas, while he would always be their Alpha, was no longer their Director. He had taken a much larger role, directing the full national organization. It wasn’t that the staff didn’t respect Billie, but with Cas still headquartering in Lawrence, it was hard to make the transition, mentally. He was just so _present_.

Cas had done all he could to support Billie’s leadership. He retained his own private suite, but he and Dean agreed that Billie deserved one of her own if custody of a suite, like a designated parking spot, was perceived in the company as a display of power, which it was. Dean swapped offices with her, forfeiting his own suite. He moved his junk into Castiel’s rooms, sharing with his husband. He barely used his own anymore anyway. Sammy shifted to borrowing Benny’s suite when he needed to pull an all-nighter these days. The transition was moving smoothly.

Dean liked his new office. It was closer to the cafeteria and the classrooms, and further from Castiel. That allowed more leeway to avoid micro-supervision and allowed for quick trips across the hall for warm cookies or a slice of pie. He also liked having Billie as his operational boss. She was brusque, but fair. She wasn’t intimidated by the imbalance of holding a superior management position to subordinates who owned the company, and Dean respected that about her. She had a job to do, and she made no bones about doing it. She proved a beta could supervise alphas and make it work.

She passed him in the hallway on her way back to her office.

“Report, Winchester. Anything I should know about?”

Dean turned in his tracks, walking backward with a thumbs up. “All quiet, boss. Like a well-oiled machine.”

“Excellent,” Billie replied stoically. “But Dean, I meant you, not The Facility.”

Her sharp gaze drew him to a stop. He reversed course, pulled toward her by her Tertiary charisma.

“Me? I’m good. Great, even. Firing on all cylinders. Why wouldn’t I be?” He halted just out of arm’s reach.

She cocked her head slightly and regarded him. He could feel her assessing, scenting the air. “No reason,” she remarked. “Benny had some concerns. You wouldn’t want to fill in the gaps on that I suppose?”

Dean huffed with a subtle roll of his eyes. “Benny’s been talking to Cas. And Cas is overthinking as usual. I’m fine. Got my alpha coat on, and it’s purring on all eight cylinders. Come take a whiff if you don’t believe me.” Dean lowered his head to the right, opening a space at the side of his neck, offering her a token submission and a chance to scent him directly but steering her clear of his Mating-scar. A ripple of chill bumps cascaded down his arms, raising the hairs. Dean’s ability to serve his Submissive up on a platter while firmly entrenched within his own alpha was a beautiful display of instinctive Lupin elegance. He winked from within his alpha, flirting shamelessly.

Billie scoffed. “Fine. But report to me if you slip.”

Dean saluted irreverently and skipped backward on his heels, jaunty. “I’m covering for Cas this afternoon. I’ll see you at two for Operation’s monthly recap. That’ll prove my headspace one way or another. Those assholes would test anyone’s stability.”

Billie smiled in spite of herself. Something about Dean always seemed to worm beneath her curt workplace demeanor, usually as an irritation. Sometimes as amusement. She shook her head, shrugged, and let him go. He had a point. Operations meetings had a way of droning on and on in sheer monotony that tested even the stoutest professional headspace. They had been known to drag on for hours under Cas’ leadership. Cas always wanted to hear minutia from his managers. Well, not Billie. Changes were being made. She wanted crisp, short, meaningful updates. People had far too much on their plates to waste time wallowing in someone else’s details.

She unlocked Castiel’s office door and checked the tray under his mail slot for any paperwork that had been left for him. It was empty. For once it seemed Becky remembered he wasn’t here and had rerouted his interoffice correspondence. She started across the hall to her own office but stalled several feet away as a familiar and unexpected scent hit her nose. Slowly, she approached, unsurprised when she found the door unlocked. She pushed it wide. She stood framed in the doorway and sighed tiredly.

“What are you doing here?” Billie asked rudely. She hated being caught off guard. It wasn’t about being put out with the woman in her office, it was entirely about the surprise.

Helene glanced up from the sofa, a shiny new deep brown leather couch that Billie never invited visitors to use. “I need to talk to you.”

“You should’ve called. You know better than this. There will be consequences, Submissive.”

“You wouldn’t’ve answered,” Helene replied calmly. Her dark curls framed delicate features and enormous liquid brown eyes. She was beautiful, and Billie felt anger bury her longing. She was in no condition for a face to face.

“I can’t do this. I told you that.” Billie let the door close behind her. She controlled her pace. Sedate, not bullish. She took her chair. She’d picked it for its height and weight and presence. It had a thronelike quality to it, and sitting in it, Billie ascended. She schooled her expression to forbidding. They _had_ been over this. Decisions were already made. Billie considered briefly that Helene might have a fall imminent and had made the trip in desperation, but her nose told her differently. No, this was an intervention, and Billie determined to put a stop to it. “I don’t have time for a relationship. I need to focus on my work. I can’t afford distractions. You wasted a trip.”

“I’m going remote,” Helene blurted. “I’ll still travel a lot. That won’t change. But I don’t need to live in New York anymore. I’ll be able to set up a base anywhere. Anywhere, Billie. I want to live here…”

“You’re not listening…” Billie objected, scowling and leaning in.

“No! _You’re_ not listening!” Helene shot back. “I know what you’re afraid of, Sharice!”

“Don’t call me that! We’re not scening…” Billie snapped.

“I’m in love with you.”

The words rang heavy in the air, reverberating in sound waves or memory, one of the two. Billie stared at the woman with her mouth gaping. She sat back in her chair, diminished somehow. Deflated. Pity pinched her throat closed. Was it for herself or for her Sub? That arm’s length between them had always been her safety zone.

Helene continued. “I don’t care about the sex, Sharice. I don’t care. I can do that bit for myself. You know I can. I’ve done it for years. I don’t need that from you. What I need is you. I need you, Billie. I want you. I don’t need it back from you like that. I know you don’t work that way. I just want to be your Pack. It’s all I want.” The silence dragged, a weight upon both their bodies, pressing them apart. Helene’s face fell as the wait lengthened, and she lowered her eyes. “Say something.”

Billie swallowed. She couldn’t form the words she needed. She couldn’t make them spill over her tongue. Billie was no liar. And it would be a lie to say she didn’t love this woman. But _in love_ was a whole different thing, and Billie didn’t even really know what it meant. She’d never found a pathway through to that emotion, was certain she wasn’t wired to feel it at all.

“You deserve a mate who can return your feelings,” Billie replied dully at last. “You’re so beautiful. You deserve more than I can give you.” Staunchly, she held her chin up. “I won’t bind you into a loveless bond. I won’t do it.”

Helene stood up, glowering. “Goddamnit, you don’t get to make that decision for me! You don’t get to define what love is or isn’t, not for me. I know you love me. Maybe it’s not the same thing. Maybe it’s something different. But that doesn’t mean it’s lesser. Don’t you understand? I _want YOU!_ Not some random Domme in the subway who Triggers chemically with me. Time’s running out for both of us, Billie. We both encounter new people every damn day. Either of us could Trigger at any moment. And then we’ll have lost our chance! I’m asking you not to let that happen. I’m begging you!”

Billie growled, but Helene stubbornly continued.

“I can move to Lawrence. Get a little house of my own. Live near you without moving right on top of you. You can have your space. I won’t stifle you. I won’t demand more than you can give.”

“Would you listen to yourself?” Billie asked in dismay. “Do you really think that little of yourself? That you would tie yourself to a half-existence as a sideline to a wolf who can’t love you? Jesus Christ, Helene!”

“You don’t believe that. It’s not a half-existence to you, beta. And it’s not to me either. You’re a coward,” the Submissive accused. Her eyes blazed. “I can smell the desperation in you. I can smell your longing. You can see it, same as I do. You want this – you want a Pack. You’re just so eat up with self-loathing that you can’t let yourself be happy, and you’re afraid to redefine what a Pack can be. Throw it all out, Billie. Toss out the sex and the romance, the insistence that there is only one kind of love that matters, and _look_ at me. It’s only you and me. I don’t need romance from you, Sharice. I need _you._”

Billie snarled. She was out of her chair in a blink, one hand wrenching Helene’s head back by her hair and the other arm around the small of her back, holding her tightly. “Don’t,” she warned. Words with sharp edges were slicing far too close to ones she’d given up imagining.

The conversation was a stunning blindside, and it was scraping at a deeply buried fantasy that Billie had been through a million times already. It couldn’t work. It _couldn’t._ Helene lived half a continent away. And Billie’s people here in Lawrence needed her. She had a roadmap to follow, and it didn’t allow for any side trips like Mating the most amazing woman she’d ever known. Mating was for romantic attachment, and Billie wasn’t made that way.

“Do it,” Helene goaded. “I dare you.”

Billie bared her teeth. Her grip tightened in Helene’s hair until she pulled a tight grimace on her Sub’s face. Billie’s wolf took her over, casting aside the controlled beta and driving her into a vastly different headspace, one where reason and life goals held no meaning, one where the audacity of a Submissive to goad had only one possible response. One where an aromantic ace could _have_ a mate. It was folly, but Billie no longer held her own reins. A growl rumbled low in Billie’s throat. She shoved, and Helene stumbled backward onto the couch, breathless but unafraid. Billie followed, covering her with her body, sucking a bruise on her throat – not intimate, Dominant.

Helene lifted her chin in Submission, panting. “Please, Sharice. Please…” She fumbled with her skirt, kicking the hem upward to her waist and working a thumb under the waistline of her panties, tugging them down to her thighs, rolling her hips. Billie was lost inside her wolf, rolling her body on top of her Sub’s, squeezing her hips, pulling her hair, growling. She smelled Helene’s arousal, and her wolf took up the challenge.

It wasn’t sex, at least not in a conscious way. It was Claiming, and that would always be different.

Billie snarled and drove two fingers deep into Helene’s body. Helene arched her back into the intrusion, rolled her hips and whimpered.

“I…can’t…” Billie huffed, thrusting hard with her hand, slamming as deep as she could get them. “Don’t…_WANT!… CAN’T!”_

But whatever she meant to say died on her lips as she leaned down and closed her mouth over Helene’s right shoulder, sinking her teeth in and breaking the skin with a tortured sob. Helene fell lax beneath her, softened, floating. A Claim rippled outward from their bodies, tingling, curling their toes.

Such a little thing…

“God, oh god, oh god, Sharice! Yes!… God, yes!”

Billie was still growling. Her head tucked under the curve of Helene’s chin, rolling gently from side to side while her fingers under the hem of Helene’s skirt finished her Sub off, and her teeth held onto meaty flesh. She felt Helene come from inside the effervescence of their new Mating-bond, and her body erupted in second-hand chills. She removed her fingers slowly. She pulled her hand away, pulled her thumb off the hot button it had been stroking in her wolf’s effort to drive her Submissive out of her mind, to prove she had the upper hand. Who had the upper hand now? She placed her palm on Helene’s thigh instead. And slowly, very slowly, she released her jaw, tasting blood.

Billie lifted her head and found her mate’s eye. Both women stared motionless, shocked and overcome. It had happened so fast. Forty-five seconds at the most, and all of Billie’s years of denial were for naught.

Billie adjusted her knee up onto the couch so she could lean up a little and give Helene space. It was obvious that neither knew quite what to say. A part of her had always assumed that if she Mated, she would stop feeling like herself, but she didn’t. Billie squeezed Helene’s thigh, trying to reassure her until she found her voice. Billie wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand and stared at the russet streak in wonder. Within her mind, she reached out across a new bridge, exploring, enraptured. Sparks shot in every direction beneath her metaphysical touch. It was wondrous.

“You are in so much trouble, Submissive,” Billie croaked, at a loss.

Helene chortled a broken and uncontrolled laugh, half a sob. “I can’t believe you did it. You actually did it.” She tried not to grin, but her facial expressions weren’t exactly under her control. Tears escaped her eyes. She lay boneless, melted into the contours of the couch.

Billie huffed and leaned down to kiss her briefly. “It appears I still can’t say no to you for long.”

Helene laughed. Her hair lay in a picturesque halo around her beaming face, her eyes soft, her mouth curling into a gentle, satisfied smile. “You said no for fifteen years, kiddo.”

“Goddamnit,” Billie groused, shaking her head in bafflement at her own lack of self-governance. She extricated herself, climbed to her feet, straightened her suit, rubbed her temples, and blew out a long exhale. Mating? Damnit, that was for allo-wolves. She’d spent decades insisting there was no inherent compulsion for wolves to pair up. And she still believed that. There were other ways to connect, platonic ways. Packs could cleave in hierarchies built around domestic consolidation. They could. She’d been testing options in the research wing for ages. And now?

Goddamnit.

She picked up her desk phone and speed-dialed Benny.

“You got a minute? There’s been a complication. Plans have changed. Bring your meter.” And she hung up just as abruptly. Billie leaned against her desk and faced Helene who had fixed her clothes and rolled up onto one hip, looking entirely at home on the couch. Billie cocked a brow at her, pinning her in place. “So, here’s how this thing goes down from right now,” she stated assertively, brooking no dissent. “You go back to New York. Pack up your shit. Sell whatever you don’t want. Ship the rest here. Get out of your lease within the month no matter what you must do to make that happen and get your ass back down here to me. While we’re apart, I’m going to put everything in writing: what I expect, what I want, what I _don’t_ want, and what our dynamic will and won’t be. You do the same. But don’t you dare ask me for what you know I can’t give. I’ll file the registration just as soon as I find an alpha stupid enough to sign on with us. I _will_ have the Pack, Helene. Nothing’s changed.”

Billie frowned as an odd sensation rocked her with its core at the center of her breastbone where she could feel her Mating-bond lodge. It was pain, Helene’s pain. Helene’s emotional ache registered in Billie’s body, and she found she hated the sensation. Her wolf hated it. She cleared her throat and rubbed at her sternum and rephrased. “What I mean to say,” she tried again, feeling the tightness loosen, “is that we can work together to fulfill each other without either of us having to be anyone she’s not, and we can build a Pack around us. I have plans, Helene. There are more out there like me, and they need pack just as much as you do. They need a way to connect without _having_ to pretend to feel what they can’t feel.”

Helene’s wide eyes glowed with happiness. She sat up gracefully, and Billie found herself kneeling in front of the couch to brace her mate without meaning to do that. Her body moved on its own. She traced a gentle thumb through the tiny trickle of blood at Helene’s shoulder. The wound stanched; it was already clotting.

Benny knocked once and cracked the door to peek in. His eyes flew wide and he hustled in, casting a furtive eye behind him to make sure no one in the hall was close enough to scent inside Billie’s office, and closed the door behind him.

“This is a surprise,” he told the women, nonplussed. “I expected to find someone laid out, but I never expected _this._ Permission to approach?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Billie chastised, feeling embarrassed now that she was out of her wolf. “Just take the damn readings.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Benny grinned. “You want me to patch her up while I’m here?” Benny ran his Peliomometer around the outline of Helene’s body, smiling softly at her and patting her knee. Helene never took her eyes off Billie.

“We’re not bandaging it,” Billie stated. “And I can clean it myself, thanks.” A look from Benny ruffled her further. “And you can keep your stupid _protocols_ to yourself. Be glad I allowed for readings at all.”

Benny nodded, unsurprised. Dominants rarely agreed to concealing Mating-bite wounds. He had insisted his mate wear off-the-shoulder tops for weeks after they Mated, just to show off her healing wound. He checked the readings, saved them carefully, and then turned a questioning look on Billie herself. Like Dean, Benny’s relationship with Billie was a contradiction in multiple layers. He topped her in both ratings, and he was part owner of the ACRI. But Billie was the Facility Director now, and that gave her a powerful leadership position. Institutionally, Benny reported to her now, not the other way round.

She sighed and nodded and held her arms out to either side so he could trace her aura with the meter. Benny made it efficient, mindfully following the curve of her body all the way around so he only had to do it once. He frowned at the reading. Billie took him by the wrist and turned the display so she could see it. She scoffed.

“Figures,” she said.

The overlap between their two readings was barely enough to register. But she could feel Helene in her body, in her head, sparkling fresh and new and delightful against her soul, snuggling in like hot cocoa and popcorn on a mid-winter movie night, and Billie smirked over her shoulder at the woman. That Mating-bond enforced itself in surprising ways, worming into Billie’s psyche to rewire her priorities. Billie was still Billie, but she had a whole new set of synapses homed onto Helene’s welfare. And she found the tug of those links delicious, pleasurable enough to override her gruff disposition – at least where her Sub was concerned.

Helene grinned. She stood up, reached her arms up over her head to stretch, and yawned. “I’ll get out of your hair then, Sharice. I know you’re busy. I’ll wait for you at your place?”

Billie fixed her with an unforgiving stare and pointed a regal finger at her back-office door into the suite behind it. “You march your ass through that door, and don’t you leave my suite until I come for you even if the place burns down around you. Do you hear me? I haven’t finished with you.”

Benny laughed outright. “Congratulations to you both. I feel like condolences might also be in order, but I don’t know which of you needs them.”

Billie transferred her imperious glare to Benny. “I do hope that’s not _cheek_ I’m getting from you, _alpha,_ because I won’t hesitate to write you up for it and make sure you pay publicly.” Billie scowled, and he pressed his lips together, mid-chuckle and shook his head. His eyes continued to dance though. He pocketed his meter. “Good,” she told him sternly, showing not a hint that she was freshly Mated. “Then get back to work. Not a word of this to anyone.” Billie waited for his respectful nod before shooting over her shoulder at her mate, “I thought I told you to scoot!”

“Yes’m,” Helene chirped, jumping to it.

“And don’t you _ever_ call me Sharice again where someone can hear.”

Helene’s eyes flew wide. She flushed. Her eyes dropped to the floor, and she stammered, “Oh god, I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Forgive me…?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Billie said far more softly. “Ask Becky to pick us out a nice restaurant and make reservations. I’ll see you at six. We’ll untangle everything, _Elenaki mou._ I promise.”

Helene looked as if she might say something more but then nodded and disappeared through the suite door.

“Why are you still here?” Billie asked Benny with her eyes and hands on a stack of papers on her desk. She shuffled through them, organizing her thoughts to bring them back to her pressing tasks. Benny stood with his hand on the doorknob.

“You can’t bury this, Billie.”

“I’m not. But I have work to do, and so do you.”

“Would you like me to have Josie fill out the Mating certificate?”

“I can communicate with my own assistant, thank you.” She took her seat and scooted her chair up under her desk, booting up her computer and dismissing him.

“Beta?” he prodded, skipping into his Secondary to pull on her. She glanced up without moving her head and waited. “This is a good thing, Billie. And if you need help sorting through it, I’m here. Come and talk to me.”

She licked her lips and nodded.

Benny bravely continued. “You can do this without sacrificing yourself. But you’ll adjust easier if you don’t try to do it alone. I can help, Billie. You’re not the first asexual wolf to mate spontaneously. You won’t be the last. It’s going to take some adjustments, but it’s doable. There are strategies.”

“Benny. I love you. Get out.”

He chuckled. “Love you too, boss. See you at two.”

The door clicked closed behind him, and Billie’s gaze slipped into vague distance. She could feel her mate. She could have pointed right at her through the walls. The beta was curling up in Billie’s bed, stretching out to take a nap, unperturbed at being dismissed mere moments after the biggest event of her life. Or non-event. Helene felt rapturously happy in Billie’s sternum. But Billie just felt…settled.

Josie entered without knocking as usual and stalled in the door, stunned. Like Benny, she scuttled in and closed the door with a quick peek over her shoulder. “Oh my god!”

“Not a word,” Billie advised without looking up. “Nothing’s changed. What do you need?”

Josie’s eyes were bright with the promise of being in on a tightly kept secret, even if it wouldn’t stay secret for long. “Sign here,” she said in a strangled voice. “And here. Your twelve-thirty moved to one. I can bring you a lunch tray if you don’t want to go to the cafeteria.”

Billie graced her assistant with a rare almost-smile. “Thank you, Josie. I would appreciate that. I have some things to work through before I go public with this.”

Josie smiled warmly and nodded. “I understand. I’ve got your back.” She let herself out.

Billie’s computer pinged with a notification, showing her the Peliomometer readings Benny had just sent over. She wanted to dig her heels in and hold onto the anger that had flared up so hot but so brief, but it was gone. She felt calm, at peace. She felt oddly fulfilled, despite the readings that showed a mismatch between her chosen mate and herself. What did the algorithms know anyway? She and Helene had been skirting the issue for years, but they always stuck on their shared ambitions. Neither would give up her career, and neither wanted the other to risk everything she’d worked for. Billie had been telling herself for years that there was no path to make this happen, even as she fell asleep often with a painful longing for something she couldn’t have.

She wanted a life partner, always had. She longed for a family, even though she preferred a family constructed platonically, people to share a home with, unwind with, gripe at when she was cranky, comfort when she felt nurturing, share the grist of daily responsibilities that made living alone exhausting. It wasn’t about romance, although she felt no real qualms over making herself available as the object of Helene’s romantic impulses – provided she wasn’t expected to perform a reciprocation. It was about friendships so intimate that they became effortless. It was about saying fuck social norms and building a platonic family with people who understood her. Helene _got_ Billie down to her very soul. Billie had wanted this for years, to build a home with her best friend, her scene partner, her partner in crime, the one person she’d ever felt safe to let her hair down with.

She could not have asked Helene to relocate.

But it was done now.

Funny how life does that sometimes.

In the backwash, Billie felt startlingly still. Maybe it was shock. But what she didn’t feel was regret, and that was fascinating. Regret was what she expected. But it wasn’t there. Helene had provoked this. Surely, she knew what she was getting herself into. Billie had never been shy about her Dominance. It would be a critical part of any intimate relationship, platonic or otherwise. Helene wasn’t entering an equal partnership. She had provoked a Mating from a staunch Dominant, and that meant exactly what it sounded like. They had perfected the complexity of nonsexual scening over years of play. Their wolves vibrated to the same frequency even though Billie’s ultimate finish line wasn’t sexual, and Helene’s was. Billie had methods of offering her Sub a satisfying experience without crossing that line herself.

Helene had never once intimated that she needed a sexual connection or expected Billie to show sexual desire. Billie wasn’t wired for sexual attraction, couldn’t have described what it might feel like. That had always been okay with Helene. The woman was Universe-blessed, a gift in an unfriendly world. Why they weren’t True-Mates, Billie had pondered long into many a night. She had never known another allosexual wolf not to succumb to the drumming of its own libido and eventually need some reciprocation. Billie couldn’t give that. She could go through some sexual motions in service to a partner she valued – on occasion, in the right headspace. But she couldn’t perform desire. She couldn’t reciprocate sexual attraction.

But Helene had never needed her to. The beta, a professional journalist, sophisticated and successful, ambitious, brilliant, and driven, gloried in letting her hair down, in taking orders, in rolling over to show the tender white of her belly and grovel under Billie’s expensive Italian pumps without ever flipping into something sexual. That dynamic was _everything_ to Billie.

Billie worked diligently for about half an hour before giving in and texting Cas:

_”Call me when you’re down from your high. There’s news of a personal nature you should probably know. Do NOT call me while you’re tied, for fuck’s sake. It’ll keep.”_

Her phone rang at once. Billie rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and answered.

***************

“Whatever are you attempting to do, Omega?” asked Fred in the laundry room door.

“Fred! Oh, thank god! Are you back? Are you better?” Gabe abandoned the mountain of soiled clothing at his feet to launch himself at the butler in relief. “I missed you so much! Cas made me be you, but I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and the whole house is upside down!”

Fred’s perfunctory hug calmed the Omega. “No matter, no matter. We shall right this ship in no time.”

“Gabriel!” Monique called angrily from the hall. “I _told_ you the bedrooms were already handled. You got us both doing the same damn job twice! Again!” She rounded the door and pulled up short at the sight of the butler. “Oh. Shit. Sorry, sir.”

Fred took the folded towels out of her hand with a cold expression. “That is no way to address your employer, Monique. And as it is Friday, you well know your assignment. Best get on it, yes?”

“Right away, sir. I’m so glad you’re back!”

Monique reversed her step and disappeared. Fred held the stack of towels with enough reverence that they might be employed to display the crown jewels and he raised an authoritative brow at Gabe, still standing knee-deep in dirty laundry and looking lost.

Gabe dropped the toddler bedsheet, stained with Alex’s nighttime accident, and fell to his knees. “Save me, oh wise and ancient one! I beg you!”

“Remove yourself from this catastrophe, Gabriel, before I summon assistance to have you removed.”

Gabe bolted to his feet, kissed Fred’s cheek on his way out, and vanished. He left Fred eyeing the mountain of laundry and wondering tiredly what else he would find in disarray. Fred carried the towels to the main linen storage, collected his clipboard, straightened his blazer, and began an inspection. He determined never to succumb to illness again.

***************

Early Saturday morning Dean shook his hand out, stretching his fingers to alleviate the strain, and then he picked the pen back up and continued. A little hand reached over the ledge of the table and nearly slid his completed stack of lines off into crumpling fists. Dean slapped his free hand onto the stack just in time.

“Leave Daddy’s work alone, Jimmy. I’m not going to tell you again,” he grouched, lacing an alpha tone into his voice. The pup let go but continued to study his father. The worst part of writing lines was how long it took to finish. Dean would have rather a strapping any day of the week, and he would’ve preferred that even if he wasn’t a masochist. Lines were a living hell.

“What you doin’?” Jimmy asked. “O-Pop said leave you lone ‘cause you was in trouble with Papa.”

Dean sighed and lifted his son onto his lap. “If O-Pop told you to leave me alone, why are you here bugging me? Papa told me to write sentences, chief. Lots and lots of sentences. And if I don’t finish them by tonight, he’s going to make me write more. So, you see, I need to focus and not answer little boy questions all day long.” Dean dug his fingers into Jimmy’s ribs until the boy chortled with laughter.

“I can write them too?” Jimmy pulled up to kneel, driving sharp knees and toes into Dean’s thighs. Dean huffed and grimaced and adjusted his son on his lap.

“I wish you could, sport. But here, let’s get you some crayons and you can have some of my paper. Sit here with me as long as you want and write with me.” Dean lifted Jimmy onto his hip to dig a handful of crayons out of the kitchen drawer that had been co-opted for kid-friendly distraction tools. He set the boy up in a chair of his own with a stack of paper and a pile of crayons. Dean settled back down, arched his back, and then curled back over his own paper.

Jimmy watched him work for a bit and regarded his own paper.

“I don’t know how to writes sences, Daddy.”

Dean chuckled and kept going. “You don’t have to write sentences, kiddo. Remember, Daddy’s being punished. Writing sentences is a punishment, and Jimmy’s not in trouble like Daddy is. You can draw anything you want. How about a dinosaur? A dinosaur sure would make me feel better about how my butt fell asleep two hours ago.”

Jimmy whined and scattered his crayons. “I don’t wanna draw,” he grumbled.

“Mm-hm,” Dean agreed. “I’m with you there. Sure wish I could go play with my brats instead. But I’m stuck here. You won’t keep me company?”

“Not brats, Daddy,” Jimmy laughed. “Not supposed to call names.”

“Oh, yeah? Who told you that?” Dean shook his hand out and bent back to his task.

“Nanny Kate.”

“Ah, well, she’s usually right about these things. You should mind her.”

Jimmy watched, entranced for some reason.

“Why you in punished, Daddy?”

Dean peeked up for a moment but then concentrated back on his paper, finishing another sheet, and turning it face down on his stack. He caught the stack again when Jimmy moved to look at the pages. “I said leave it where Daddy put it.” Jimmy pulled his fingers away, still waiting for an answer and not ruffled at being sternly corrected. Dean exhaled, started a new page, and explained. “Daddy smart mouthed Alpha and punched Uncle Sammy. I broke Alpha’s Pack rules, champ. Gotta take my punishment. That’s how things work in this Pack.”

“Did Auwfa spank you?”

“Not this time. This time I have to write sentences. Uncle Sam did though. So, I got two punishments. Hitting people gets you in _big_ trouble. Let that be a lesson, son. Don’t cross two Tops at the same time.”

“What’s ‘Tops’ mean?” Jimmy asked, riveted as Dean’s pen flew across the page, scribbling words he had memorized. Dean set the pen down. He pursed his lips, thinking and then met his son’s eye, giving the boy his full attention.

“Jimmy, a Top is the grownup wolf who’s in charge. In our Pack, Papa’s the Alpha, the top Top.” Dean said it carefully to emphasize the capital letters, imbuing them with the honor they deserved, teaching the culture to his son in a way the boy would absorb into his psyche by childhood osmosis. “He’s the highest Top of all. But underneath Papa, most times Daddy is a Top, sometimes Uncle Sammy is a Top. And Cain, and Aunt Kali. It’s something you can feel in your bellybutton if you try. It’s not who has the biggest body. It’s who _feels_ like the biggest on the inside.”

“Like the meanest?” Jimmy asked, intrigued.

“Not meanest, bud. Strongest and safest and most in charge. Do you understand?”

“O-Pop is most in charge besides Papa,” Jimmy pointed out.

“Mm, yeah, to pups he is sometimes. O-Pop is a Top too, kiddo. At least he is for you and me.”

“Not for Mommy?”

“Mostly not for Mommy. It’s confusing, I know. You’ll be able to feel it better when you get older. Alphas are Top for betas and Omegas and pups. Betas are Top for Omegas and pups but not alphas. But Dominants can be Top for their Submissives, and that makes everything messy.” Dean acknowledged the perplexed crinkle between Jimmy’s eyes. Except for his sandy hair, the kid looked just like Cas when he cocked his head and frowned in confusion like that, and Dean laughed. “Here, just think about it like this for now: for pups, every grownup in the Pack is your Top, and you must mind them. But you don’t have to mind your brother and sisters, or your cousins; you just have to be polite to other pups, not obey them. A Top is in charge, so if you do what they tell you, you won’t get punished like Daddy. That’s all you need to understand right now. Make sense?”

“Is Mommy Top?” Jimmy persisted.

“There you are,” Michael said as he came into the kitchen. “Squirrely little mongrel. Didn’t I tell you to leave Daddy alone?”

Jimmy laughed and vaulted from his chair, sending crayons scattering, rolling to the floor, and dashing into Michael’s arms. Michael lifted him with a wry look toward Dean. “Sorry, this one snuck away. How’s it coming?”

Dean blew a tired breath out upward toward his hair. “At this rate, I may finish by Christmas.”

“Twenty more minutes, and then take a break,” Michael instructed with the same Dominant air he’d used on Jimmy, a tone of command. The unspoken _’Do I make myself clear?’_ hung heavy between them.

Dean stared at him for a moment and then set his pen down. “No,” Dean told him, unconsciously lifting his chest. “This is none of your business. It’s between Cas and me, and you can butt out. I don’t need you regimenting my schedule.”

“O-Pop is Top, Daddy,” Jimmy reminded him.

“Not right now he’s not,” Dean said acidly. “Not for me.”

What followed was a brief but adamant argument inside their bonds. Michael held his ground long enough to really piss Dean off. Ultimately, Dean’s expression solidified, and his irises reddened around the perimeter, and Michael flushed, dropping his eyes.

“Apologies, alpha,” he murmured. “I was out of line.”

Dean continued to bore holes with a resolute glare until Michael lifted his eyes. “It won’t happen again, Sir,” Michael said intently, blushing to the tips of his ears. His hands fidgeted as he held their son on his hip.

“Jimmy Dean, go find Grandma,” Dean said in a voice that widened Jimmy’s eyes. Michael helped the boy slide to his feet and gave a gentle nudge to his back. Jimmy trotted happily out toward the parlor. Michael kept an eye on him until Fred took him by the hand and guided him across the foyer.

“Alpha, I’m sorry…”

“I get that it’s confusing what with how fucked up I am most of the time, but …”

“You’re not _fucked up…,”_ Michael protested.

“I was talking, Omega,” Dean snapped. “Kneel, for me, please.” His voice was resolute steel.

Michael swallowed, struggling with a sense of shame that Dean tugged against inside their bonds. He lowered onto his knees and dropped his eyes. Dean adopted a tone of prosecuting lawyer before a skeptical jury. “Outside of our scenes, which are frequent and intense, who of the two of us is the Top?” Dean questioned. He left his papers scattered on the table and kicked idly at a crayon to send it back toward the others on the floor. Michael followed it with his eyes.

“You are, Sir.”

“I am,” Dean agreed. “So why do you feel obligated to try to Top me outside of that? Are you not getting enough from me? What more can I give you, Michael? Should I go naked around the house and kneel at your feet twenty-four-seven?”

“No, Sir,” Michael replied with military crispness.

Dean studied his mate, more inside his head than visually. Michael fell very still in his head, wary. “Is it that I grovel on my belly for Castiel, and you want a piece of that outside the playroom? Is it that you see me as one of your pups? Breakfast not enough for you?”

Michael sighed miserably. “No, Sir. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I get carried away sometimes; stuck in my wolf. I spoke without thinking.” Michael blinked rapidly at the flush of hot hormones through his bloodstream.

“Are you out of Balance?” Dean asked at the same time he felt for it in Michael’s breast and shamelessly scented his throat.

“No, Sir. I Released the night before last when I bottomed for you.”

“That’s what I thought,” Dean agreed. “But I thought I must’ve been mistaken. You led that one. You bottomed from the Top. But it was a mild scene.”

Michael glanced up. “I Released myself, alpha. I used you for ballast, but I did it myself.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean grunted, still glaring at him. “So you just… live… in that nineteen now? Fuck the hierarchy? Fuck your alpha mate? I could believe that bossy bullshit you just tried was an accident, but when I pulled rank, you fought me for it. I’m not gonna put up with a coup, Omega.”

“No, Sir.”

“Get up and strip and then back into position. I want you bare.”

Michael huffed hard through his nose, but he obeyed.

_“Humble_,” Dean instructed once his mate was back on his knees, knowing how much Michael hated submissive poses.

Michael caught himself before his distaste showed on his face. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to the tile, lifting his hips slightly, raising his ass, clasping his hands on the floor in front of his crown. Dean began a slow circle around his mate, appreciating the graceful lines of the Omega, even as their bonds flared up inside them. Michael warred with himself, endeavoring to tamp it down on his own so Dean wouldn’t need to. Dean’s technique would be most unpleasant. He knew what was coming, and he knew it would be worse if he couldn’t get a lid on his wolf first. He might be a nineteen, but unless he was channeling the vast extensive Omega core at the center of his soul with his voice, his alpha mate outweighed even his wolf. And Michael wasn’t stupid enough to try that.

Dean glanced up as April’s mother gasped in the archway with Emma on her hip. “Oh! I’m sorry. Excuse me, alpha.”

“Don’t be alarmed, Kathleen,” Dean soothed. “Come in and get what you need. The kitchen isn’t off limits.”

“Thank you, alpha, We’ll c-come back later.” She scuttled backward, leaving a scent of distress.

Dean put her out of his mind. He fell to one knee behind his mate and slapped a handprint onto Michael’s right cheek. “Do you ever consider it, Omega? Revving up that superhero voice just for me? See if you can overpower me when I’m alpha the way you did all those assholes with their signs?”

“No, Sir!” Michael ground out against the floor. “Only when we’re scening and you okay it!”

“You sure about that?” Dean spanked him again. Michael rocked forward, flinching, and then put himself mindfully back.

“I wouldn’t! I swear! Alpha, I swear it!”

Dean freed his cock, scraped three fingers through the weep of slick at Michael’s hole, and coated himself. He didn’t need to pump his cock except to raise his own temperature and stoke his alpha. He was already hard. Hard and furious. This confrontation had been coming to a head for some time as the boundaries between each man’s dominion blurred. It was Dean’s fault. He’d grown complacent.

He threw exasperation into his growl. “You practically shit yourself for Castiel, but I still have to drag you kicking and screaming to get an ounce of respect from you. I deserve better, Michael Quentin! Say it!”

Michael huffed against the floor. He arched his back, rolling his hips to offer his ass, and he chanted, “You deserve respect from me, Sir. You deserve respect. I’m sorry, alpha. I’m so, so sorry!”

Dean slammed home, reaching forward and tangling his fingers into Michael’s hair, punching his breath out of him and lifting the Omega’s torso off the ground. Michael scrambled to get his hands under him. Dean took him hard. The sound of masculine grunting, slapping skin, and a high-pitched whine echoed up across the vaulted ceiling and out into the parlor. Michael fell forward and braced on his elbows, rubbing them raw, as Dean’s grip in his hair forced his head back painfully. Hot tears streaked the Omega’s face. He continued a desperate litany of apology, but Dean couldn’t hear the words, as his own blood coursed in his ears, deafening him to everything else.

Dean turned his face to the ceiling, stuttered his hips and came, groaning loudly. His Adam’s apple bobbed. A hot Claim-report popped harshly over them both, tightening their skin, flexing every muscle between them. Michael gasped.

“I dare you to try it, Michael,” Dean whispered into his mate’s ear before pulling out and standing up. “I dare you.” He tucked back in, still wet, and zipped up. Michael sneaked a tentative peek at his mate and then sank back into _’Humble,’_ his least favorite position. A gloppy ooze tickled the inside of his thigh as it dribbled to the floor.

Dean stood over him for an interminable time, silent and uncompromising. Michael didn’t move.

“Did I make myself clear?” Dean asked at last. “You are not in charge. I’ve been patient. But I’ve had enough. I give you your share, _Sir_, and I’m happy to do it. But don’t you dare come rolling over _my_ time thinking you get to run my life. I am _alpha_, Michael. You feel it? Dig way down in there, Omega, and feel it, goddamnit.”

“Yes, Sir, I feel it.”

“Good. Keep your mind tangled in it. I want you in the corner, thinking. Twenty minutes.”

“Yes, alpha.” Michael rose gracefully. He clenched his hands into fists to keep himself from wiping the ooze off his inner thighs.

“Why did I give you twenty minutes?” Dean asked stiffly. He paused Michael with a hand on his shoulder.

Michael’s chin rested on his chest, but he cut his eyes toward his mate. “Because that was the time limit I tried to set for you?”

“That’s right.” Dean squeezed, tapped Michael’s ass, and then took his seat again. “That’s exactly right. I want you submerged in our bonds the whole time you’re in the corner, feeling the weight of our Secondaries. Get real familiar with what it feels like, tastes like, smells like. No more slips, or I’ll pull _way_ back on your helpings of my wolf until you remember who’s in charge.”

Michael sniffled pathetically. “Yes, alpha.” He laced his fingers at the back of his head and pressed each elbow to the wall, straightening his spine.

Dean stooped to collect the scattered crayons and put them back in their drawer. He wiped the smears of body fluids off the floor. He tidied his pages and sat back down in his spot at the foot. He picked up his pen, flexed his hand, glanced at Michael, and began to write.

***************

The cane fell again, and April wailed, shaking in her grip of the bar over her head. She sobbed miserably. Castiel growled fiercely, way down deep in his sternum, a terrifying sound that sparked in his brilliant crimson eyes. April’s body throbbed, aching and heated and hungry, but her mate had ripped himself from within her mind, and that was the hardest ache of all. Her Mating-bond, it was closed. He’d never left her alone during a scene – not during a scene, or a punishment, or a therapy session. Not ever. Not like this.

“Two more,” he spoke through his wolf, cold and heartless. Distant. “Can you hold? Answer me!”

April could smell his arousal, and she stretched out within her bond, beseeching him to slake himself in her, beating against the wall between them. He needed her, but he was so far away. And she couldn’t reach him.

“Answer me!”

“Yes, Sir,” she answered, her voice shaking in pain and desperation. “Please.”

“No _begging_,” he growled, snarling. “Submissives take what they are given. Say it again!”

Her knees trembled, legs too shaky to be sure of, and her hands sweated in their grip. “Y-yes, _Sir!”_ she affirmed breathlessly.

Castiel whipped the cane back and brought it down on the swell of her ass. April threw her head back and screamed. Before she caught her breath, he did it again, only millimeters higher. She lost her grip. Her legs gave way. She crumpled into a heap on the floor, bawling. Castiel strolled placidly to the wall of built-in drawers. He stowed the cane, arranging it just so with its brethren before closing the drawer and turning his back to the wall to regard his mate. He felt disconnected, cool and hot, but not entirely of this world. She rolled in agony, alone. She reached for him.

He felt his head tilt curiously to the side. She was beautiful. He narrowed his eyes. Her body called to his, and he went to her, hungry.

He scooped her up, making shushing noises with his mouth, no comfort in his efforts, more an attempt to muffle her pained cries for his own ease. He laid her out on the soft, raised, flat surface, a perfect convenient height for his use. Such comforts this world possessed.

April took to the bed and rolled onto her back, flashing her belly and whining piteously, instinctively currying favor, but he flipped her back over, unfazed, and dragged her by the ankles until she lay bent over the edge with her head buried in her arms and her chest heaving. April had never seen him like this. She’d long known he had it in him, and worse. But he’d never disengaged his front-brain entirely and left his wolf alone with her before.

Her ass stung like fire, swollen and welted. But it wasn’t the pain that rankled. It was the distance between them. It was the cold aloofness of his wolf. The wolf that adored her, had loved her desperately from the moment it first scented her. He had closed off every source of affection or regard and taken to beating her like a mangy dog. It was the first time April knew fear, and it thrilled her enough that she felt a trace of concern deep inside for her own depravity. She widened her stance, hoping the blows were ended. But he would do what he would do. And April would not contest him.

Wide, strong, hot hands wrapped around her body at her ribs and flexed into her flesh, squeezing, grasping. He purred behind her, snuffling like a beast, sounds that could be a chuckle or a hum or a grunt. April peeked out from beneath her arm, seeking him peripherally, daring not to look at him directly. She whined, a sound her voice box produced of its own volition.

Castiel purred again, grinding himself against her sit spots, driving his hips in decadent circles, flaring her heated welts, and making April cringe.

_"Mine,”_ he grunted in an otherworldly crackle as the base of his cock and his knot ground hard against her body. April responded by widening her feet further and opening her hips, canting her pelvis upward so that the arch of her back ached. She ducked her head back down. If he wanted her face, he would put it where he could see it. He hummed louder, thrilled at her acknowledgment. His hands pulled a hard, stinging stretch downward from her ribs to her hips, and he used his grip to grind harder into the slick wetness of her crotch, rubbing harshly against her sensitive flesh, rutting, lifting her bodily until her feet lost contact with the ground and she had to press back with her palms splayed on the bedcover, searching for purchase, trying to lodge a knee into the bedding. “Mine,” he growled.

He dropped her back to the bed and sank down to one knee behind her, snorfling animalistic sounds, nosing into her channel, lapping at the flow, nipping at her rim and labia. April bit her lower lip and held. He wouldn’t harm her. Her wolf swam in a sea of trust, treading his waters. She dug her toes into the carpet and walked her feet wider apart, shamelessly opening her hips to his pleasure. Castiel seemed incapable of coherent human speech. Without his bond, she couldn’t read him well enough to be sure. She had to trust. Her wolf laid its ears back and bared its teeth in a submissive grin. He took to pulsing a steady, swaying rhythm against her, humming to himself, glorying in her scent, her taste, in the feel of her. He stood upright, incapable of settling, lifting her with a forearm under her belly, inverting her, continuing to eat her out, spreading the sticky slick everywhere his face touched. His stubble burned against her cane-reddened skin.

Without warning, he dropped her to bounce on the mattress, crowding in close with recklessness in his scent, and before she could brace or breathe or anticipate, he breached her, rutting frantically, his hands lifting her by her thighs to bring her into him as strongly as he thrust into her, crushing hard finger-bruises into her legs, splaying his hands.

April fell limp, giving over to him. The pain felt distant to the promise of a culmination of her Heat. Nothing mattered anymore, only the quickening and the inevitable. He’d already taken her multiple times, choosing to slake the desperation of their first night and day and into the next night before throwing caution and self-control to the wind for a mid-cycle scene that fulfilled her promised punishment caning and flavored it to feel like one of Dean’s punishments. This moment felt like a climax to that in every way. April’s empty channel spasmed as she came, flooding slick downward to where the Alpha’s cock disappeared into her cunt, his knot buried and straining. He groaned at the sight, pressed in, pulled her into him like he wanted to meld as one, and filled her with a roar of completion and a rigid pressurized Claim-bond that seemed to explode behind her eyelids in a firework of sparks, sending little mini-explosions to set her fingers and toes tingling.

April breathed out a long, shaky exhale as her Heat eased and the exhaustion of pain and fear and desperate want eased with it. If the Universe cared about the solace of Omegas, she would have passed out. Instead, she floated in a sea of buffeting waves, listless, too tired to swim, too tired to think or feel. Too tired to worry about whether she sank or floated.

Everything ached except the cool center where his seed coated her burning flesh.

He stood stock still above her, feet planted wide on the floor, nostrils flaring, and he breathed with her thighs still gripped in each palm. Her legs akimbo, she barely registered when he finally lowered them to the ground. Only his body, tied to hers, kept her from flowing off the bed to puddle on the floor.

At last, in a dreamlike state, Castiel eased them both fully onto the bed, curling around her on their sides, wrapping her in a possessive cocoon embrace, and he fell asleep with his nose snuffling at her scent gland. April pushed backward into him, drained, and followed him to sleep, throbbing.

But slaked.

A few hours later, in the middle of the night, Castiel awoke first, groggy but aware of himself. He scowled at the cold mess and groaned at the protest of sore muscles. But looking down between them in the faint light of the ceiling rails, the damage he’d wrought upon his mate’s body took him aback. Cas sighed softly and shuffled backward, sitting up. His muscles objected, but he ignored his own state. He nudged toward her with his side of the Mating-bond and found it still closed. Slowly, he eased it open, careful not to wake her, and he explored her physical sensations from the inside. He inspected the color of her dreams. He searched her mind, soft in sleep. She would need a painkiller and ointment.

She mumbled something incoherent and rolled toward him with her arms outstretched. Cas lay down beside her. With one hand he stroked her hair; with the other, he kneaded her lower belly. The swollen bruises would keep. Her awareness sparked all at once, and he felt her throw herself into their bonds. Cas widened his side as far as he could and mimicked the sense of his touch inside her mind. She broke into sobs before she fully awoke. By the time she reached full consciousness, she was weeping.

“That’s my sweet baby. I know. I’m here.” He cradled her and rocked her. “We’ll talk about it when you’re ready. Let it out, Kitten. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Now that she was awake, Cas had a conscious mind to delve into. Her thoughts were her own, but her emotions told him everything he needed anyway. He dug through her, readying the damage control he felt certain their relationship would need, but search as he did, she held steady under his probing. Her sobs were grounded in relief at having his bond back and in the physical pain she’d awoken to, but she wasn’t afraid, wasn’t emotionally strained. There was no falter in her trust. She was…okay, even deep within her nearly bottomless depths.

He found waning traces of residual fear, fading rapidly even as he watched. He found a worrisome knot of front-brain shame, enough that he would need to address it later. He found determination and pride inside her wolf and an echoing wallowing afterglow in her Omega. He didn’t find any weakening in their connection, any resentment, any distrust. She had taken him as a wolf, it seemed. That would have buffered her psyche.

At length, her sobs subsided, leaving her spent and hiccupping in his arms. He kissed her repeatedly. He massaged the soreness from her arms and legs and back. Finally, he eased out of her embrace and collected a warm wet cloth to wipe her sticky body down. He held a bottle of chilled water to her lips and helped her drink it. He changed the bedding beneath her without tumbling her from the bed, and then he dosed her with a pain reliever and fed her chocolate. All the while, in their heads, they nuzzled, locked in intimate convergence.

At last, laying her out on top of a clean bedspread, he addressed the damage to her backside, rubbing arnica in and inspecting every welt, every bruise, every swollen contusion.

It wasn’t as bad as it might have been. She had taken worse than this before. His whip had done more damage on other days, more than this. But in scenes past, when he’d whipped her, he had always stood right beside her in his head, giving her something stable to hold onto, giving himself an inside view of her state of mind. Although this incident hadn’t resulted in the worst physical damage she’d ever experienced, she had had to face it alone, and that made it harder.

He thumbed her cheek aside and inspected her channel, scenting the slick that oozed out. He smelled no sign that he’d entered her there, only fresh, clean, Heat-thickened slick and the delectable musky aroma of estrus. He might’ve caught a trace scent of saliva, but that was harmless. Cas meant to steer clear of her channel this cycle, but he wasn’t sure that he recalled everything his wolf did to her while off-leash. He thought he did, remember that is. But there were moments that felt fractured in his memory, as if recalled through the lens of a dream. He lowered a few inches and brazenly scented for a hint of fulfillment, but it was too soon.

“Do you always sniff your patients when you treat them?” April teased over her shoulder. Her voice was trashed. It sounded grated. Cas looked up at her in concern, releasing her butt cheek and crawling up the bed to stretch out beside her. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“I do, as a matter of fact,” he taunted back. She smiled in reply and then lowered her eyes again, demurely. “Did I breach your channel?” he asked as an excuse to entice her to speak again as he pressed his thumbs into her throat to feel the lymph nodes against her trachea.

“No, sir. You did some nibbling. I think your tongue touched my cervix down there, but your cock went nowhere near my channel. Funny to think we’re hoping to get pups out of an experience like that, that we’ll have diapers and sleepless nights and onesies as a consequence of sex that raw. The two aesthetics couldn’t be more different, could they?”

He huffed a simple laugh and tapped the tip of her nose.

“It’s good to have you back,” she told him, luxuriously stretching her toes toward the end of the bed and pillowing her cheek in her arms.

“Are you ready to talk about it?” Cas asked.

“Are you?” she retorted playfully, feeling lust building, a simpler feeling now that their cycle was past its midpoint. The urgency tempered to a sultry warmth, not the driving insistence it had been, but if they didn’t reply to it soon, it would begin to burn painfully. He wouldn’t make her wait. He never made her wait.

Cas chuckled. “You’re being awfully cheeky for a girl who just stood face to face with my wolf. Are you not impressed?” Cas wasn’t certain that lighthearted was the best response, but it _felt_ right, and he thought perhaps letting April lead with whatever tone came naturally might prove the best approach. He caught her grinning, and he swooped in for a lingering kiss.

When he pulled away, she had a thoughtful somberness to her. “Is that what you do with Dean? From your wolf?” she asked. “It was pretty cold, Cas. Does it go like that when you punish him? Were you trying to give it to me the way he would’ve had it? I mean, since he’s the one who earned it originally?”

“No, no, no,” he was quick with an adamant answer, but then he frowned, turning troubled. “Well, not often. And not in years and years. We found our perfect intensity over time, Kitten. Yes, we have done…_this_ together. But these days what we do is far less harsh. I never pull entirely away and leave him to my wolf. Not anymore.”

“I see,” she said. She bit the inside of her cheek, studying him. “But you didn’t have a real Claim-bond until your wedding… If it wasn’t like this, then how did you read him?”

“We’ve always had a bond, Kitten, just not a wide one. But you’re right. I couldn’t feel him the way I do you. I still can’t. No, I tempered myself from inside my own head. That provided the guardrails we needed to play safely. I never let my wolf off-leash without standing by in my front-brain as a spotter. I never left him completely alone with my wolf as I just did you. What I just did with you, Kitten, that was extremely dangerous.”

“I’m honored you trust me that much, Alpha,” she told him in a whisper, tracing the bridge of his nose with a manicured finger.

“April, I hope you understand…”

“I understand, Cas. You don’t have to explain.”

“Do you still trust _me?”_

“With every fiber of my being.” She rolled onto her side. “I trust all of you, however many of you are in there.” She poked his chest and then flattened her palm over his heart.

“Even though I’m a monster.”

April cocked her head, still studying him, curious. Did he need her to tell him he wasn’t a monster? Did he want to feel what her fear had felt like? Did he know how it felt to her to have come through that without breaking or cowering or fleeing or fighting? “I don’t scare easily, Sir,” she told him with a smirk. He laughed, and the tension left his brow.

“That’s the truth,” he agreed. “You are so perfectly matched for me. I will never cease being amazed. Now,” he stroked her hair and kissed her lips. “You’re going to eat something. I’m going to knot you as gently as I can, and then you’re going to sleep until mid-morning. By the time you wake up, you’ll be starving again, and we’ll get Tony to whip us up whatever the hell you want for breakfast. I’ll hand feed you with my knot tying us together. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to smell whether you’ve conceived or not.”

April beamed. She threw a leg over his hip and leveled her voice to sound like a newscaster: “Tony award winning songwriter, April Novak Winchester, beaten nearly to death by her beast of a mate for crimes committed by her mate-in-law, was granted three weeks R&R for her fortitude under duress during the conception of their newest litter.” The croak of her voice spoiled the delivery a little.

He kissed the grin off her face just to taste it. “Nice try. Those crimes are your responsibility even if you didn’t commit them. Also, you look far too pretty under my lash to get a three-week reprieve. You are going to let me take care of your voice though, Kitten. We can’t take chances with your vocal cords.”

“Dean’s mad you gave his lashes to me, Cas.”

Cas leveled a look at her pulled straight from his Alpha. “You leave Dean and his anger to me, April. He is not your responsibility.”

“I know,” she told him a mite petulantly. “I only thought you should know.” Her lower lip poked out into a pout.

Cas laughed. “I know all about his reaction to losing his swats. That boy is under continuous training, Kitten, just like you are. He requires inventive exercises in submission, not mere repetition of the same old drills.” Pulling away, Cas asked, “And speaking of drills, are you ready for another run-through? We can wait until after you sleep if you’re too tired or we can add an orgasm-control measure to this lazy round. You choose.”

“Me and my big mouth,” she groused, correctly deducing that talk of Dean and his tantrum put Cas in mind of Sub-training. “I’m too tired for a delay exercise…”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a commanded release. No long arduous efforts required, just a quick orgasm, a knot to cool you off, and a nice long sleep. Sound good?” He petted her hair and scratched at her scalp gently.

“How quick do you need me to come?” she asked, wary.

“Ten seconds of stroking then four more to come when I give the word. You’ve done very well in your training, April. You can do this, even if you’re tired. Especially since you’re still in Heat.”

She pressed into the touch of his hand and closed her eyes. “Yes, Sir. Reward?”

He did the thing with the brow and the lowered chin and the eyes, and he said, “Your reward is that you won’t be punished.”

April blinked rapidly and lost her powers of speech momentarily before squeaking out a, “Yes, Sir. And…and the punishment?”

He softened back to a moderate persona and rolled onto his back with an arm behind his head. “Something mildly unpleasant. This is low-stakes training, Kitten. It’s just for practice. How about, let’s say if I’m not pleased with your performance, you can kneel in front of me for my next round and watch me get myself off without any assistance from you. Sound fair?”

“You _are_ a monster!”

Cas beamed at her and pulled her to him for a lingering kiss. Then he whispered, “If the smell test is positive, are you ready to invite our boys in tomorrow after breakfast?”

“It’s your call, Alpha,” she answered with no hint of a preference, pressing up with a hand on his chest and finding her way back into the solidity of her front-brain. She offered him no hint of worry that their efforts toward impregnating her might not have been successful either. He liked her responsive and ready but reactive, not proactive. He loved it when she followed his lead.

He preened. “Yes. It is.” Cas touched his tone with his wolf’s voice, and she smiled widely. “But I would very much like to hear your opinion.”

April laughed musically. “If you’re ready, I’m ready. Although, if you don’t want a foursome scene, I’d rather you split off with Dean and leave Michael with me. You earned a little private time with your husband, sir. Of course, it’s entirely your call. _Alpha.”_

He slapped the outside of her thigh, and she dissolved into giggles, feeling light and free.

***************

Dean relocated from the kitchen to the pool house as Tony busied himself short-ordering a massive brunch tray for the H/R room. Dean hated absenting himself when half of his pups’ parents were locked away, but his husband had been quite clear about his expectations for those damned lines. And while Dean was still steamed at Cas, he meant to pick his battles. There was a method here, not anarchy.

Michael reassured him that the pups were well cared for and reminded him that any moment now, the Alpha would be unlocking that door in the basement and summoning them both in where steam fogged the mirrors and scents that pups didn’t need to be smelling hung heavy like incense. Dean only grunted, foregoing a reminder that he had no intention of following that summons. Michael wouldn’t believe him anyway.

And so it happened. Dean lacked a mere fifty iterations of that ridiculous sentence when his phone pinged on the table. He stared at it for a moment with his pen resting against paper. He’d laid the phone face down. But he knew what it would say when he looked. He felt the moment his husband cracked his bond-link open into Dean’s mind, and it was a tempting sensation. He could feel Cas in his head, anticipating, thrumming with carnal hunger. Dean could feel Cas salivating, his groin tingling, his muscles relaxed. Could feel Cas reaching for him.

Dean licked his lips, smacked them, chewed briefly on them, and then set his pen back into motion without looking at his phone.

It pinged again, accompanied by a tug at his navel.

Dean kept writing. Within his bond he sent a quick dismissive slap – light, but decisive.

The resultant sense of surprise from Cas made Dean clench his left fist on the table and rock slightly in his chair. Dean closed his side of their bond and kept writing.

His phone rang.

He picked it up, stared at his husband’s name for a moment, and then answered.

_“Dean,”_ Castiel growled. _“Open your bond. Don’t be recalcitrant. I need you.”_

“I have work to do, man,” Dean replied coolly. “See if Michael’s interested.”

Castiel’s shock echoed through the silence in the phone connection and reverberated against the closed bond-link in Dean’s chest. He licked his lips and drummed his heel beneath the table. Eons of evolution fought to lift him from his chair and put him to work on his knees before his Sir, but he kept his butt stubbornly planted. Cas had made his decision. And Dean had made his.

_“It’s Saturday, Submissive,”_ Castiel intoned reasonably, with a very unreasonable rumble at the back of his throat. _“You don’t have any work that cannot be postponed. Open your bond this minute! I won’t ask again.”_

Dean cleared his throat. “Lines, Alpha. I’m not done. You made it clear I had to finish them by tonight. Plus, Eileen is coming this afternoon for the pups’ checkups and shots. You wanna leave them without a parent for that? No can do, C.J., they need me more than you do. I’ll catch you later.”

There was a pause. Even without a bond-link or a scent in the air, Dean could feel the man coiling. He shivered, feeling an electric jolt in his nethers and at the back of his neck.

_“This is about our argument in the clearing, isn’t it?”_ Castiel asked curtly.

Dean huffed audibly into the phone. “This is about you finishing your own cycle with your own _mate_ like you’re supposed to and leaving me the hell alone to finish this goddamned punishment like you _told_ me to!”

_“Forget the LINES, Dean Michael, and get your ass to the basement immediately! This is not a request! It’s an order from your Sir!”_

Dean feigned a yawn. “Look, if it’s all the same to you, Ceej, I’m gonna take a pass. Billie Mated unexpectedly, I’m sure you heard, seeing how she lives in your ass. Someone needs to check up on her regularly for a few days. The pups need me this afternoon. I got these _lines_ to finish. Michael wanted a cobbler with dinner. I’m swamped today, man. You wanna maybe pencil something in for next week?”

The line went dead in Dean’s hand.

His heartrate picked up. He pursed his lips and blew out a shaky breath. His palms began to sweat, so he rubbed them on his jeans. With his bond closed, Cas would have to search him out. But the Alpha was coming. That much he knew.

It didn’t take long. Dean watched him slam the back door and stalk around the perimeter of the pool, wearing only a pair of fitted running pants, eyes red and blazing, fixed on Dean through the sliding door. Dean schooled himself to slouch a little and relax. He swallowed around the lump in his throat. He felt his eyes redden, and he couldn’t stop them. His heart pounded in his chest.

Castiel threw the sliding door open, took two strides into the little kitchen, and hauled Dean out of his chair by the back of his collar. Dean planted his feet and tore himself free.

“Get yourself another slave, asshole!” he objected.

But Castiel was prepared. He lowered his shoulder and picked his husband up bodily, draped over his shoulder like a sack and wordlessly carried him out of the pool house kicking and pounding and hollering a string of expletives. Dean managed to catch the doorframe on the way into the main house, and he held on with all his might.

Cas spanked him hard and wrenched his grip loose taking the hallway to the left that led to the foyer where shocked pups had spilled out of the living room at the noise to gawk at their fathers.

Dean managed to shift his weight enough to overbalance himself and slide off Cas’ shoulder to land rumpled on the floor. He crab-walked backward until he was out of the Alpha’s reach and then got his feet under him in a crouch. Castiel stood glowering down at him. Kate and the elder Kathleen froze in their efforts to round up six dismayed pups as Castiel’s Rut-scent filled the cavernous space. His bearing took up the whole immense room, and no one moved.

“I gave you an order,” he barked, furious.

“And I said no,” Dean snapped, just as mad but far less powerful.

“You _don’t_ say no to me!” Castiel reiterated, standing his ground, clearly expecting his Sub to come to him.

“You can’t have it both ways, Alpha,” Dean shot back, still in a crouch.

Michael appeared upstairs at the bannister, Reginald right beside him with a newspaper hanging limp in his fist, awed and silent.

To Dean’s left, Sam and Jess took up posts in the parlor entrance, carefully still but ready to move.

Castiel raised himself to his full height, his eyes shifted back to cold blue, his jaw set like marble. “I am not going to count. I am not going to repeat myself. I am not going to carry you. You know what I expect, and I will wait until you decide to obey. The longer you make me wait, the less you will enjoy the outcome.”

Dean stood up. He crossed his arms over his chest and cocked an impertinent brow. “Get comfortable then,” he told Castiel. “I can do this all day.”

_”Dean!”_ Michael hissed.

Dean ignored him.

“This is neither the time nor the place for this discussion,” Cas said.

“That’s funny, because according to you, there IS no time or place,” Dean snapped. “You closed the subject. We’re done talking about it. You made up your mind, and to hell with what I want. You’re a patronizing, controlling asshole, and I just have to live with it. Well, maybe I’ve had enough of that blue-eyed control. Maybe I don’t wanna roll for you just because you say so. Maybe I only wanna roll for _him._ I want to talk to your wolf.”

“What is your safeword, Dean Michael?”

“Why? What difference does it make? Fuck the safeword, C.J. Forget it. It doesn’t exist. Fuck the contract! Fuck the rules! I’m not playing this stupid game anymore! This is not _play_ to me! It’s never been _PLAY!”_

_”NO!”_ Castiel roared. “I _won’t_ do it! I _WILL NOT_ cave to a brat tantrum! It isn’t your decision!” Castiel took a menacing step forward, and Dean backed up, throwing a warning hand up.

“Don’t you touch me!”

“Don’t touch you?” Castiel asked mockingly, taking another step forward. Dean matched him, stepping backward, eyes wary, body primed for defense. Arms up. “Or what, Dean? We can’t have it both ways. You said so yourself. If I take you up on your request to throw out your safeword, then what? Can I touch you then? Can I throw you over my lap and spank you like the unruly child you’re being?”

“That’s your call, isn’t it?” Dean taunted. “You can’t _make_ me bow unless you _MAKE_ me, and you’re too scared to do it. So, it looks like we’re stuck.” Dean clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the soreness of his right hand after hours of writing lines, trying to flush the adrenalin through his system before it overwhelmed him. “Because I’m telling you no, Alpha. You hear me? I said no.” Dean was aware that ‘No’ wasn’t a safeword, but he was ready to call the man’s bluff or die in the attempt.

“Dean!” Michael hissed again.

Dean looked up at his mate then around at the Pack. Gabe and Kali were at the mouth of the hall that led off toward their suite. He hadn’t seen them appear. Kali edged in front of the pups, still spilling around their Ozzie handlers. Cain joined Michael and Reggie at the bannister. Sarah hovered in the shadows of the parlor behind Sam, clinging to Adam’s hand. Only April was missing. If there were ever a time to take a stand, this was it. Cas would never get more primed than right now. And Dean needed the audience. He wanted a precedent and witnesses.

He relaxed his defenses, but drew himself to his full height, solid within his alpha, eyes a brilliant red. He broadcast an intention to hold his ground. Cas might call it a brat tantrum, but that’s not what it was. Dean planted his feet.

“It’s your move, C.J.” His voice was deadly calm.

Castiel’s eyes flashed red and then rolled back to blue. His nostrils flared. His chest heaved. “You are not in charge, Dean. Go finish your lines.” With a dismissive jerk of his head, Castiel turned his back on his husband.

“That’s what I thought,” Dean goaded. “Too afraid to take ownership even when it’s shoved under your nose.”

The growl in Castiel’s throat should have been a warning, but he moved so fast, Dean didn’t even have time to back up. Sam’s arms shot out in front of his mate as a protective guard. Kali did the same. Kate and Kathleen snatched pups off the floor and hustled the whole flock backward toward the living room. Gabe and Adam crouched instantly, as did Michael. But Castiel, looming right in Dean’s face with a hand gripping each of his upper arms, livid, was not out of control. He was furious. But his eyes were blue.

“What did you swear to me at our wedding, Dean Michael?” he breathed.

“It’s not that simple,” Dean simmered. “I promised to obey you, but you promised to take ownership! Fulfill your promises, Castiel James!”

“You may not like it, Dean, but this is me fulfilling every promise I ever made to you. You’ve confused fantasy with real life, and I am under no obligation to fulfill your fantasies when they are _dangerously_ reckless!”

“You’re starving your wolf, Cas. Don’t you see? He’s on a leash so short he can’t lift his damn head, and it’s for nothing! Pull the stick outta your ass and _let go_ for once in your goddamned life!”

Castiel slapped him hard across the face. Sarah gasped and stepped into Sam’s orbit, clinging to his shoulder. Sam shifted to bar access to the parlor, shielding Jess and Sarah both, while Adam remained in a low crouch. Dean took the blow and then faced the Alpha again, defiant and fuming. Another slap, bringing a dribble of blood from Dean’s lip as it split. He ventured a surprised touch to the corner of his own mouth, and another straightening of his spine and a defiant stare.

Stepping close enough to loom, even with his lesser height, Castiel ripped Dean’s shirt down the front and left it hanging ragged from his arms. Dean’s breath caught in his throat, but he stood his ground.

“Papa, don’t!” Kat cried from her spot behind her grandmother’s legs.

“Take the pups away,” Castiel ordered over his shoulder, gruff, uncompromising.

Dean quivered. His breath shook, but still he held. Behind Cas, Kali shepherded the Ozzies and pups into the hallway and out of sight, dragging Gabriel with her. Cas watched their progress out of his peripheral vision with his head cocked at an oblique, never quite taking his eyes off his Sub.

“Your Submission, Dean Michael. Now. Kneel.” He turned back to face his husband, and his eyes held no softness whatsoever, crimson and glowing with an inner light.

“Make me,” Dean whispered.

The blow to the side of his neck crumpled his knees, landing him in a heap, ears ringing and head spinning. He found his way to his hands and knees, looked up at his husband and smiled. His teeth were stained with blood.

“Let go, Sir. Let go of the leash. Let go. I need it. _You_ need it!” Dean spit blood to the marble floor and struggled up to his knees.

Castiel took a knee in front of Dean, his brows high, his face controlled, his eyes back to red. “You listen to me very, very closely, _pup._ I can beat you into surrender. I could _compel_ you. But I’m not going to. You’re _going_ to bow to me.”

“No.” Dean shook his head. “I’m not.” He moistened his lips, smearing pink. “You’re going to have to make me.” Dean struggled up onto shaky legs. He looked down on his Dominant, and he opened his bond-link. Into the bond, Dean shoved his obstinacy, the misery of his designations and his adamance to let himself suffer as long as it took, proving his backbone, and Castiel broke. He flew to his feet, hauled Dean by the dregs of his shirt and slammed him against the front door.

“You forget,” Castiel growled in a voice pulled from the depths of hell. “You forget who I am.”

“There you are,” Dean breathed in awe.

“Shhh,” Castiel’s wolf purred, a terrifying sound. “No words from you.” He traced Dean’s lips with a thumb. “That’s enough talking.”

“I need…” Dean started, but the hard backhand shut him up. His head bounced off the tempered glass of the door.

“Enough talking,” the wolf repeated, and it shoved Dean to his knees with both hands tangled in his hair. “I’m sad you’ve forgotten me. Perhaps a reminder…” He thrust Dean’s face into his crotch, rutting the hardness of his erection against his Sub’s cheekbone, crushing his head between the door and Castiel’s hips. Dean struggled to find his balance, to orient himself and get his mouth open and ready, but Castiel gave him no opportunity. He just ground Dean’s head into the door, crushing him, rutting, thrusting, grunting above him, rubbing his scent all over Dean’s face.

Castiel prided himself on having the prowess of his designations to win obedience through a dark, nameless promise within the weight of his carriage. A look into his eyes and a meaningful narrowing of his eyes told his underlings everything they needed to know. He didn’t have to threaten directly. He didn’t have to wield the power at his command. But if he didn’t call it forth when he was challenged, then it wasn’t truly his to begin with. Castiel held Dean in place with the strength of his body and the fortitude of his wolf, and he forced him to submit through the weight of his Alpha. Dean felt the air ripped from his lungs. The pressure in his bond stung worse than any full-armed slap.

Over his shoulder, Castiel’s Alpha called to Michael. “Omega, she waits for you. She is replete with my seed, and she has fulfilled her purpose. You may taste of her many flavors, but you may not couple her without a sheath. Do not cross me, Omega. You have my trust. Do not lose it.”

“I won’t let you down, Sir,” Michael agreed as he took the stairs two at a time and then disappeared around the back, down toward the basement. Reginald followed Michael more slowly down the grand staircase, but he veered to the left and took the hallway to follow his mate and the passel of pups. Cain stood sentinel at the upstairs bannister, a spotter of sorts. Sam cut his eyes toward Cain’s and shared a look as the sound of Dean’s struggles echoed off the high ceiling. With a nod, Sam retreated, taking Jess, Adam, and Sarah with him.

Castiel, in his rutting, worked the waistband of his running pants down below his ass. He pistol-whipped Dean’s sore mouth; blows hard enough to bloody his nose, redden his cheeks, and widen the split of his lip. Dean braced himself with his hands on Castiel’s thighs, holding his face as steady as he could under the onslaught. Without warning, Castiel grabbed Dean’s throat just below his chin, forced his head up and thrust his cock into Dean’s gaping mouth and down his throat, dragging him in by hair and throat, tugging him into an impossible angle at a height he couldn’t support on his knees.

Dean groaned and snurfled, gagging, retching. Spit, pink with blood, dripped from his chin, and he flailed, struggling to find balance and brace to keep his head from bouncing off the door. But Castiel wanted it striking the glass. He thumped Dean against the door again and again. His grip of Dean’s hair pulled the skin of his face tight, and it ached. Castiel’s fingers at his throat squeezed dangerously, turning Dean’s face bright red.

It wasn’t until Dean nearly ran out of air that he realized what the wolf was looking for from him. Dean wasn’t normally this daft, but, well, he was pretty riled, and that always stiffened his spine. He’d taken the strikes and held still for the attack on his face and head, but he hadn’t yet rolled. He held onto his rage, standing pat from obstinance, not obedience. Castiel’s wolf didn’t play. He would just fuck Dean unconscious if that’s what it took to drive him to stop fighting. Dean struggled in the wolf’s grip just a bit more, got a harsh guttural growl in return and a ropey string of drool that fell from Castiel’s mouth to land on Dean’s cheek and roll down his chin, and a renewed tug to his hair that threatened to tear clumps out at the root.

Dean’s vision tunneled, and finally, as his grip on consciousness began to slip, his panic subsided. He calmed internally. He let go. His muscles went slack. His grip, one hand clutching Castiel’s thigh, and one on the wrist at his throat, fell loose. His head slammed hard against the door, his body following like a shaken slinky. Just as he nearly faded to blackness, Castiel pulled out and allowed him to suck in sweet, sweet air. Dean fell back against the door when Castiel let him go, crumpling onto his butt, chasing sparkles in his vision, and blinking his eyes in dismay.

From high above, still impossibly close, Castiel stared down at him, imperious and implacable, and he backhanded Dean across the face again. Dean’s head flew to the side, taking him down to hands and knees, where he stayed, panting.

“What do you want from me?” the wolf asked in a deep, guttural, impossibly broken voice. “Say it, Submissive. Say it out loud. Stop playing games with me and say it. I grant you permission to use that smart mouth.”

“I want you to _own_ me,” Dean whined, looking upward tentatively.

“No!” Cas struck him again, sending him to the floor. “That is not what you want. That is a pathetic excuse.”

Dean fought for his breath. A healthy bruise swelled at his cheekbone, but he dared not touch it. He glanced up again. His conditioning kicked in under the mayhem in his head, and he sought his Dominant’s eyes.

“What do you want from me?” Castiel’s wolf repeated, haughty in his height over his Sub. “Say it, Dean Michael.”

Dean trembled beneath him. “This,” he breathed and flopped a hand between them. “I want _this.”_ It came out like a hiss. Spittle flew from his mouth.

Another blow rocked him flat to the ground, and he cried out, prostrate on the floor, sobbing.

“What. Do. You. Want?” Castiel knelt above his trembling body, his broken psyche, dour and glowering.

Dean risked a glance over his shoulder, wary of that hand that kept striking him down. Nothing but the rawest truth would do, and Castiel could tell they hadn’t reached the deepest layer yet. It wasn’t about _what_ Dean wanted. It was about _why_.

“I… I need…” He sniffled at the same time his breath caught in his throat, and he choked and swallowed and steadied himself. “I need you to hurt me.”

Cas rocked back on his heels instead of hitting Dean again, but his expression didn’t thaw. “And?” he asked shortly.

Dean felt stinging tears leave the corners of his eyes. His self-loathing lay bare and ugly and pitiful. Cas had taken him apart in moments, left him snotty and sniveling on the ground. He faced the tiles with his palms flat to the ground, leaving foggy handprints from breath and sweat and desperation. “And I _need_ you to scare me,” he whispered downward.

“That’s right,” Castiel agreed, and he stood up. “On your feet.”

Dean blinked away stubborn tears, scrubbed the back of a wrist across the smear of snot at his nose, and rolled stiffly up to his butt. He was going to be sore for days. He pressed his back against the door to stand up.

“And you believe you need it from me, not _him,”_ Castiel’s wolf intoned majestically. “But you’re wrong, Dean Winchester. What you need is to let go and trust. You have no trust.”

“That’s not true,” Dean argued, still sniffling. “I trust _you.”_

“You fear me. That is not trust.” Castiel shook his head. “You do not trust _him,_ not like you should. Not like you swore to.”

Dean frowned in confusion. “Who, Cas?”

The great wolf lifted its chin, pulling Dean’s eyes to it. “You are mistaken about us, Dean Winchester. You believe me fettered. But I am no bound creature, and he is no lion tamer. He has but one pet.”

Dean blushed.

_”Raise your eyes to me, Submissive!”_

It felt like the air vanished from Dean’s lungs. His jaw dropped, the color left his face, and he looked into the infinite eyes of the king of wolves.

“Know this…” The words came from Castiel’s throat, but they were spoken by something far more ancient and otherworldly. Red eyes gleamed, traced by blue. “…You are not who you were. You are changing, and that frightens you. Do not be afraid, beloved one. Your hatred is leaving you, and in its place, there is little to cling to. Who you were may be gone, but who you are has yet to be defined.” Castiel stepped closer, pinning Dean with his eyes. He swiped his palm across Dean’s chin, clearing away the slobber, snot, and blood. This close, he brought chill bumps to Dean’s entire body. He cradled Dean’s aching cheek. “Do not replace loathing of one kind with that of another simply because you know no other way. You are beautiful, Dean Winchester. Your soul is bright and unblemished. You owe nothing to the Universe. You owe nothing but to me. You _are… everything._ Believe. Trust. Hope. And hold tightly onto him. Do not be afraid. You need pain, yes. You do not need fear.”

Dean shivered again. His expression registered soul-deep grief. “I don’t know another way to do this. It’s all I know.”

Cas chuckled affectionately. “That is why you require trust, little one.”

Dean felt five years old under the gentle agelessness of this great being. How could this be the wolf that Castiel feared? Who was this creature? “I don’t want to give up the pain. Please. Don’t make me give it up. I need it.”

“Yes.” Castiel’s face smiled at him, beatific. “Yes. You may fly when you need to, love. And I will take you there. I love you so much. I love you, my cherished alpha-brat. I will do this for us both. We are wild creatures, are we not? We are not tame. We are not meant to be. But pain is not fear. Release your fear, Dean Winchester, and fly free with me.”

Dean gulped around the lump in his throat. He nodded, holding Castiel’s hand against his cheek. The red in Castiel’s eyes faded to warm blue adoration, and Cas smiled at him. Dropping his eyes to Dean’s split lip, he frowned slightly. “The contract stays, Pet,” he stated. “Let this be the end of it. If I am in charge, then I am in charge.” He held Dean’s eyes, poignant in the sparkling prismatic light filtering through beveled glass. “Say it for me, please.”

“Yes, Sir. You’re in charge,” Dean breathed.

“Even if you do not like my decisions?” Cas prodded with a twinkle in his eye.

“Yessir. Kinda the whole point of being in charge, isn’t it?” Dean’s grip on Cas’ hand at his cheek tightened. He pressed his pained face into Castiel’s palm.

“No, love. The point is to provide us stability and trust, to ensure predictability, and to allow for room for each of us to fulfill our natures safely. It’s not to stymie your inclinations. We need limits. I would prefer that you joined me in this decision, but I’m past waiting for you to agree.”

Dean huffed. He tasted the blood at his lip. “Yeah, I got the message. Kinda hot though, you slapping me down.”

“No, Dean.”

Dean winced and lowered his eyes. But he nodded.

Cas sighed. He righted his pants and scooped Dean into his arms. Turning to carry him across the foyer, he noted that Cain was gone. They were alone. As they should be.

Castiel mounted the stairway. Dean melted into his arms, whispering, “She caught, then?”

“I smelled at least two distinct new scents,” Cas agreed.

“Congratulations, Papa,” Dean said with his head resting against Castiel’s chest. Boneless.

Castiel took Dean to the master suite, closing the door behind him with his foot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Gimme a minute to catch my breath. 
> 
> For those who didn't think Benny's advice to knock Dean's head halfway across the foyer was appropriate, you're right. Benny meant it hypothetically. But Castiel's wolf was obviously listening. And, well, Dean had stopped listening to words.
> 
> I fully expect questions, concerns, etc. This is the kind of development that could hit us either way. It's a love it or hate it kind of evolution. Cas went wildly OOC with both his mate and his husband.
> 
> Lastly, I overwrote Billie's section. But I felt compelled to give her a good long spotlight. Aces are underrepresented in stories, even considering how small a proportion of the population we constitute. And so often, where they are represented, it's often still depicted as a fulfillment of the drive to pair up romantically that other characters have in their arcs. I'm right here doing the same thing to Billie. So it seemed important to explain why. To clarify Billie's orientation, she's an aromantic sex-indifferent asexual. She can have sex. She just doesn't want it. And she isn't attracted to anyone romantically or sexually. But she craves a D/S connection, and she wants a Pack. She's been exploring options to build one based upon platonic and hierarchical bonds, not romantic or sexual relationships. And then Helene showed up. So that's fucked.
> 
> That is all. Carry on, Pack lovelies.


	21. Wednesday, August 18, 2021

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's helping a novice Omega learn the ropes, and the kid learns fast. At the facility, it's just another day in the life. Cas is putting out fires and leaning on Billie and Dean to do it. The new assistant needs some breaking in. At home, things are running smoothly. There's a contentment making it feel cozy. But Cas and Dean still need to discuss what happened last Friday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a quick turnaround from the last chapter. For some folks, that'll be welcome. For others, it's tough to keep up. But I go back to class sooner than I'm going to be ready, and that means a serious slow down to my free writing time.
> 
> Y'all! Falka_Tyan wrote a crack-fic reply to the foyer scene in the last chapter: [Find it here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323204) It's awesome and had me rolling!
> 
> Thanks a million times! I'm honored.

Lupinicity – Chapter 21 – Wednesday, August 18, 2021

NOW:

“Take your time, honey. I know it’s awkward.” Jack embodied patience, trying to ease the young Omega toward a headspace that would let him think.

“There are just so many of them,” Erich whined, glancing over his shoulder at his Alpha father. “How do I know which one to pick?”

“Okay, well, first thing’s first,” Jack reminded him. “You’ll want to start with sexual orientation. How would you describe the gender you’re attracted to? Women, men, any, none, fluid, trans? We can work with whatever. What sounds most appealing?”

“I…I’m not sure. I like girls…but I kinda like boys too, I think? I’m not sure it matters.” Erich’s face flushed bright red, and he seemed unable to look at his father anymore.

Jack glanced at the powerful man looming behind them. “Alpha, this would be easier for him if he had a little privacy, I think. Would you consider waiting outside?” he asked, assertive but deferential.

“I’m not leaving, no,” the grizzled man replied with his arms over his chest. “Erich, come on, boy, make a choice. It’s not that difficult. You just look at the pictures, and you pick someone. This isn’t rocket science. It’s just fucking.”

“Right,” Erich sighed, licking his lips nervously and casting a worried look at Jack. 

“Look,” stated the Alpha. Rodrick. “I’m not against taking the matter back home and handling it myself. You said you wanted to try some stranger in a lab coat, or whatever they dress up as. So, here we are. Now pick one or let’s go home.”

“Let’s make this easier, Erich,” Jack said into the tension. “You’re okay with any gender. That’s fine. That opens it up and makes it easier to match you. We don’t know your Tertiary designation yet, so let’s just…”

“He’s a Submissive,” the Alpha interrupted. “Give him a Dominant. A strong one. Kid needs a firm hand.”

“Erich?” Jack shifted the ball back to the actual client, trying hard not to lose his cool. Alphas always made these things harder.

“I…Yes. Yeah, that would be good. Only, I don’t know enough about submission to do it right. I don’t know the poses or anything? I played around a little with some of the websites, but they all have different positions and labels, different expectations, and I’m just not sure… I don’t know what to do. Would I get in trouble for that?” Erich’s terrified expression broke Jack’s heart.

“No, man. No. We’ll put you down as a Novice and Untested. They’ll guide you every step of the way. No one’s going to expect you to know things you haven’t been trained for yet, especially before your Keller test.” Jack leaned forward and typed into the computer. “I have just the thing for you. I actually have a duo who love to work with young Omegas who are getting familiar with it all.” He pulled up one of the contract Dominant’s profile, a muscled man in his late thirties, handsome with a rugged face and broad shoulders. “He looks tough, but he’s a lot gentler than he looks…with newbies anyway. He can get rough with an experienced brat. I can attest to that myself. I sat in on his recertification test.” Jack laughed softly at the recollection.

“He looks,” Erich stammered, embarrassed. “Yes, I think he’ll be good. You said a team? You mean there would be two of them? I don’t think I want two…”

Jack cut in. “Well, only one is a Dom. The other is a Sub. She’s there to help show you what to do and to take the pressure off a little. It’s a safe way to handle the unknowns for a first timer. If you turn out not to be Submissive, then the scene can continue, but they adjust. Sometimes when that happens, the Dom uses the client as an object of submission for the Sub. He would make her take care of you. You know, that kind of thing. And you still get what you came for. And if you _are_ Submissive, then having a mentor to show you the ropes is a clever way to break the ice, help you figure it out.”

Erich’s ears glowed furiously pink in embarrassment. Jack guided his hand to the mouse and encouraged him to click around in the profiles for himself. He wished he could kick the dad out and have a talk with this kid who was clearly an Ozzie, but who just as clearly had been conditioned to believe that Submissiveness was a shameful attribute. It must be crushing to grow to adolescence and discover you’d turned into everything your father despised. And an Alpha father at that. 

Poor kid.

“I don’t think we can afford two…”

“It’s not a lot more expensive,” Jack told him. “They prefer teaming up, so they set a special rate.”

“Papa?” Erich asked over his shoulder. “He says I should pick this pair. Can I get two?”

“Do I have to pay extra to get him a good strapping while he’s in there?” the Alpha asked Jack.

Jack turned in his chair to face him, watching peripherally as Erich continued to trawl the profiles. “A certain degree of impact play is included in the package when you contract with a Dominant, sir. It’s the Dom’s discretion whether to employ it or not. But it wouldn’t make sense to hire a Dom and then tie his hands, so to speak. Of course, if you want impact play for its own sake and not as part of an organic Dom/Sub scene, then yes, there’s an extra fee for that. Everything is negotiable. We have an _à la carte_ menu.”

“And if I’m not satisfied with what happens to him in there?” the big man challenged.

“There’s a full-satisfaction guarantee, Alpha, but to my knowledge, almost no one ever needs it. If you like, we will record the session so you can review it for yourself. A recording can be helpful in a case like this, more for Omega stability purposes than for quality control. You take the recording home with you and let Erich keep it. We find a lot of young unMated Omegas do well if they make use of their early contract recordings. Between-Heat masturbation sessions play a key role in Tertiary balance for Ozzies. They don’t take the place of spanking to Balance the Secondary, but they can keep a young Omega’s wolf comfortable until there’s a stable partner in the picture.”

“I want him _handled,_ you get me? I want him fucked within an inch of consciousness. I want his ass roasted. I want him _Dominated._ Kid needs his cherry popped, and if he don’t want me to do it, then it’s gonna happen the right way here or he loses his chance to have a say. My mama died screaming, you get me? That’s not happening to my boy.”

“Papa.”

“Zip it, Omega. I’m not screwing around with this shit. Even if you wasn’t at risk of that Omega sickness, I know who you are deep down in there, and this is what you need. No arguing.”

“Yessir.” Erich’s eyes hit the floor. His hands fell to his lap.

Okay, yeah, maybe Jack had judged Alpha dad harshly. It could well be fear and not shame driving his distaste of his son’s designation. He was clearly Ozzie, and a Profound Submissive, at that.

“Standard scening rates start at fifty bucks for an hour. Add-ons are extra,” Jack said to the Alpha. “Liam and Lisa together are seventy-five. There’s usually insurance coverage for an Omega’s first time pre-Heat at sixteen. We’ll need your insurance information.” Erich had clearly tuned Jack out, back to scrolling through the pages. Jack noted he lingered on the profiles that included images of leather and bondage. He even touched a tentative fingertip to one of the pictures of a young man elegantly suspended in ropes. “You can look over the add-ons and decide what level you want to include. I wouldn’t recommend going past a level D-10 impact for a first scene. Best to save the straps for next time. See how he does with paddles.”

“Kid takes a belt like a champ,” the Alpha told Jack.

“At home, yes,” Jack explained. “But for a contract situation, the stakes are different. It’s safer to build up to it. I can get him on the schedule today, and let you take prep instructions home with you. When was his last Heat?”

“July twenty-eighth,” Rodrick replied at once. “What kind of prep instructions? He’s Omega, he doesn’t need prep.”

“No, not that kind of prep,” Jack assured him. “There’s a required infection screening, a hormonal prophylactic that’ll need to stabilize in his system, and a waiting period. All the details are in the booklet. It sounds like a lot, but it’s really not. It’s for everyone’s safety, Alpha. Plus, the contract spots fill up in advance. Even if he were already medically cleared, I’d still have to put you off six weeks waiting for an open appointment. But once he’s on the schedule, getting into the rotation is smoother. You can set him up on a cycle if you like. It’s better for his stability to keep with the same contractor as often as possible.”

“Two of them?” Rodrick asked skeptically, nudging his son in the back of the head.

Erich bowed his head deferentially and smiled slightly. “Just this once, Papa? Please. I don’t wanna face a Dom like him by myself on my first time.”

“Hmph,” Rodrick grumbled. “I’m not a fan of this new finagling attitude, boy. You get what I feel like giving, and you’ll be grateful, or you can go try your begging on the street corner. See what that gets you.”

“Yes, Alpha,” Erich replied respectfully. But he smirked at his lap where his father couldn’t see.

Alpha sighed a put-upon exhale but shrugged. “Sign us up, I guess. Better get this thing nailed down before we lose the slot.”

“That’s great,” Jack told him cheerfully. “Let me put the details into the system, and I’ll get you set. He can come in for the exam and blood tests any time next week. The clinic doesn’t require an appointment for that.” He reclaimed the mouse and keyboard from Erich, who seemed sad to see the profiles disappear to be replaced by dry forms. Jack patted his thigh reassuringly and nodded him toward a wall display rack full of brochures for different contract designations. The brochures held many of the same photos, and Erich busied himself perusing them.

“By the way,” Jack said over his shoulder as he typed the preliminaries. “We’re having a Facility fundraiser this month if you’re interested. Some of our contractors have volunteered for an auction. We’re holding daily events at lunchtime in the cafeteria. All students, clients, and staff are eligible to participate. As soon as I swipe your credit card for the deposit, you’re officially a client. So, if you want to grab lunch and buy a quickie with one of our contractors, the auction’s going on right now. No penetration, no genital-to-genital contact, and the contractor has to okay all play, but pretty much everything else goes. Most buyers like to just go for it right there in the cafeteria. It takes on kind of an orgy-festive feel once it gets going. But you can also get some privacy if you want to use one of the Blue Doors. Of course, an alpha monitor must go with you, so that costs a little extra. But seriously, don’t miss it. It’s a lot of fun, Alpha.”

“Can we Papa? Please?”

“What do you know about orgies, boy?” Rodrick challenged.

“Almost nothing,” Erich told him, pinking. “But I watched _all_ the videos you gave me for my Heats. And Mitch and me traded blowjobs a few times after school. I’ll bet that sucked compared to a professional. Come on, Papa, please!”

Rodrick sniffed forcefully and glanced at Jack, who was searching the schedule for an open slot. “Well, we have to eat _somewhere._ May as well see what’s on the menu here. Mind you, I’m not promising anything. And I’m not buying you anything but food. You got your own money. If you wanna waste your allowance on a BJ, that’s your own business. But if I don’t like the looks of whoever’s in the lineup, you and Mitch can just keep practicing on each other.”

Jack was ready for his lunch break anyway, so he led the way once the preliminary contract was set up. Erich walked with a spring in his step and a flush to his cheek. He kept turning around toward his father and beaming. Rodrick tried to play it stern, but the boy was adorable, and his father couldn’t not smile as he followed.

At the door into the lunchroom, Adam distributed flyers for the day’s auctions showing today’s slaves for sale and the process for bidding and playing safely. Jack took one and then moved aside so his guests could each grab one of their own. The three of them moved through the cafeteria line together but then separated to eat and watch the auction. 

A round was just ending, but Charlie at the microphone announced a new lineup would be in shortly and directed the would-be buyers to the correct list on their flyers. Jack kept an eye on his new clients for a while, but they looked fine, heads bent over their meals and pointing out names to each other on their lists. He chuckled when Rodrick smacked the back of Erich’s head in a fatherly chastisement that made Jack regret growing up without a dad. They looked happy together.

The room ruffled when Castiel entered with Dean. They appeared harried, speaking adamantly over Cas’ tablet, arguing maybe, but not upset. Just fervent. The husbands joined the queue for food without looking around, minding only their own business, but Jack noticed every student, every client in the room tracked them with their eyes. And it ruffled even further when Michael jogged in on his own and joined Dean at the head of the line, just picking up an empty tray. Dean smiled and kissed the man, but Cas frowned and pointed him to the back of the line. Michael scowled, but he obeyed, joining the end of the queue with a sour pout.

Once served, Cas and Dean continued their conversation as they sought seats. Without really seeming to watch where they were going, they aimed for Jack’s table and took seats, Dean next to Jack and Cas on the opposite side of the table, still arguing.

“…If I _don’t_ go, he’ll just keep pushing. Crowley only understands one language,” Cas was saying. He’d clumsily stowed his tablet beneath his tray and as he sat, he fished it free.

“He’s taunting you, man. Don’t give in to that. Send Benny. Hell, send me. Aren’t you the one who’s always sayin’ submissives don’t make demands?” Dean retorted. “Hey, Jack.”

“Hi, Dean.”

“He’s not submissive, Dean,” Cas answered as he disassembled his burger to dress it properly.

“He is compared to you,” Dean pointed out, watching a panel of auction slaves slide in gracefully and assume naked positions at the little stage at the back of the lunchroom. They lined up wordlessly with their numbers wax-marked onto their thighs. The Subs set themselves side-by-side with their feet wide apart, facing away from the diners, and as one, they bent at the waist, legs straight, and displayed their backsides to the room with their hands on a long bench.

The Doms stood facing the crowd with their legs aggressively wide and their arms crossed over their chests. Some wore leather strap harnesses, but most were bare.

Dean lit up and clapped his hands playfully with an excited expression. “Can we, sir? Please? I’ll be good. Buy me a present!”

Jack laughed and Dean winked at him before stealing a fry from Cas’ tray and digging into his own meal.

Cas turned in his seat to regard the lines of contract slaves. “I suppose I could buy one for you. Who do you like, Pet?”

Dean grinned and blushed. “Pet? Damn, man, you’re in a good mood.”

“Rut and conception do wonders for my disposition, Dean. Don’t push your luck.”

Jack lit up. “Conception? Congratulations, Sir! That’s wonderful.”

“Thank you, Jack. It goes without saying,” Cas told him, “that this news is private for now. Please don’t spread it beyond your mate and Pack Alpha.”

“I understand, Alpha. Mum’s the word.”

“How about Rafio?” Dean asked Cas, practically bouncing in his seat. “I’ll even let you watch.”

“Try to stop me,” Cas told his husband darkly. “And I would expect you’d rather have Travis. You certainly have the most experience with his paddle.” Cas smirked.

“Rude,” Dean complained with his mouth full. Michael joined them, sitting close to Dean, and transferring his extra pie slice to Dean’s tray.

“Thanks, babe,” Dean greeted. “My favorite. Hey, look, Cas says we can buy a slave. You want one?”

Michael glanced up but didn’t spare them much attention. “No, I have everything I want at home.”

Dean scoffed. “What fun is that? It’s a fundraiser, Michael. It’s for the common good. Where’s your civic spirit?

“I don’t have time anyway. My shift starts in half an hour. But you go ahead,” Michael told him with a chuckle. “Just make sure, if they’re going to spank you, they need to ask my permission and fill me in on the count so I can double it at home later.”

Cas laughed out loud, drawing eyes from all around. “Now I see why you’re campaigning to go to Dayton to put Crowley’s dick in a vice.”

“You’re going to Dayton?” Michael asked his mate. “We’ve got Gabe and Kali’s wedding anniversary. Charlotte Con is this weekend. You’re leaving?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Neither of you has an ounce of fun in your souls. Lighten up. No, I’m not going to Dayton. Alpha has it in his head that Crowley needs another _come-to-Jesus_ meeting and no one but him can get through to the asshole. I told him to send Benny. Or Jo,” Dean said like an epiphany. “Jack, you ever been to Dayton. It’s a party town, man. You’ll love it!”

“Jo and I are both going to Charlotte, Dean,” Jack reminded him. “And so is Benny.”

Cas gloated. He took a big bite and made no bones about his _’I’m always right’_ face. Dean kicked him under the table and immediately found his cheek pressed into the tabletop with the Alpha’s fist tangled in his hair.

Damn, but that man could move fast.

“Apologies, Alpha,” Dean squeaked up at him.

Cas let him go and went back to his lunch as if nothing had happened.

At the stage, Charlie tapped the mic. “Here we go, folks. Round two. Let me remind you that all proceeds go to Omega services. It’s a great cause. Don’t be bashful. You don’t need that big-screen TV anyway. We’re starting with the Subs. And just a reminder, if you’re a neutral, you can place wagers on anyone up here. These guys are pros, my people. They can switch it on and off. Aren’t they pretty? Can I get a round of applause?”

Dean stood up and wolf-whistled before whooping with his fist pumping the air.

“Really?” Michael sighed. “How is it that Sam has so much decorum and you’re like a five-year-old in a china shop?”

Dean snorted. “Look, man, feel free to trade me for Sammy, but I doubt Jess will go for it since it would mean a sexless life.” He popped another of Castiel’s fries in his mouth.

“I thought you straightened him out,” Michael accused Cas.

Cas shook his head, unbothered. “He won’t stay that way for long, no matter what we do,” Cas told the Omega. He watched the auction’s start over his shoulder while he chewed.

Dean leaned into Michael’s space. “That’s because there’s nothing _straight_ about me,” he jabbed. “Get it? Straight? Because I’m not? Get it?”

Michael’s face flattened. “Yes, Dean. I get it. You’re gay. This is not news.”

“Pick me one, man,” Dean chirped, electric in his seat, eyes dancing. “Who should I buy?” He scanned the offerings, ignoring the Subs.

“Seriously, is he on drugs?” Michael asked Cas.

“You would know that better than me, Michael.”

Jack snorted. “The bidding’s started if you guys want to get in on it,” he pointed out.

Michael looked up at the lineup, scanned the options and then read over the flyer he’d been handed at the door. He flipped his flyer and noted he had a unique number in large print on the back. Michael took his pen from his shirt pocket, circled two names on the front and slapped it onto Dean’s tray just shy of his plate. “Here, Dean. You may buy either of these, but no one else. Don’t spend more than two hundred. If you lose out, too bad. Text me the results. And I wasn’t kidding about permission.”

Michael stood up, collected his tray, and kissed the surprised look off his mate’s face.

“You’re leaving? You barely ate a thing,” Dean asked, baffled.

“Lost my appetite,” Michael said. He nodded to Cas and Jack and picked his way through the growing crowd to discard his tray.

“Jesus, he’s a grouch.”

“He’s _your_ True-Mate,” Cas pointed out reasonably. “I don’t write the rules.”

“The hell you don’t,” Dean replied immediately. “Jack, do you have to put up with shit like this at home?”

“I don’t,” Jack answered with a naïve, open expression. “But then, I stuck with only one Top.”

Cas smiled into his drinking glass and turned again to watch the bidding. It didn’t take long for the slaves to be bid on, paid for, and collected. Those who won one casually put them to work wherever they felt like it, generally opting for oral gratification, although Meg stripped bare, straddled Elaine’s lap, and then chose nothing harder than an intense make-out session with Ketch looking on and guiding Meg’s head now and then.

Dean wrinkled his nose at Michael’s selections. They weren’t who he had his eye one. But they weren’t awful either. Dean dutifully held Michael’s flyer up when Percy’s name came up, but he bowed out when one of the clients he didn’t know bid two-fifteen, apparently for his young son if the glowing face beside him meant anything. Geez, Ozzies were getting younger and younger all the time. Was that kid even legal?

Dean tossed his flyer on the table and attacked the pie Michael brought him. “I’mma be late for the meeting, Cas,” he said with his mouth full. “I’m all revved up now. If I don’t win the next one, I’m gonna need you to lend me a hand.”

Cas lost the humor to his eyes. He leaned across the table. Jack leaned back. “You’re to be _on time_ to that meeting, Dean Michael. Don’t make me enumerate a consequence. You know my expectations.”

Dean sputtered. “But the auction winners have to finish up now or lose their chance. C’mon, Alpha.”

“If you don’t have time, don’t bid,” Cas replied. “I will see you at one-thirty. On the dot. Don’t test me, Dean.” Cas stood up and collected his tray to head back to work.

“You’re not staying? The auction, Cas. It’s a big deal. It would mean a lot to the contractors if you stayed at least a little while. You’re their Alpha. They wanna show off for you.”

Cas looked around, reading the room, and he found Dean was right. They were watching him. “Very well. I’ll stay for a while. But I need to get back soon.”

“You need a real lunch break anyway, Alpha,” Jack agreed. “It’s not healthy to scarf and run.”

Cas shot him a half-shrug. He couldn’t help it most of the time. His time was precious, and once he’d eaten, sitting about in the cafeteria ate away at his productive time. He had a hard enough time keeping his head above water as it was. But now that his lunch was consumed, Cas could wander the rows of tables and connect with his institutional Pack. There was that. And it counted as a break because Cas enjoyed these people. He touched Jack’s shoulder on his way around the table. He tugged Dean’s head back with a grip of his hair, and he kissed his lips upside down, leaving his tray for Dean to deal with, and he began a casual stroll between the tables to gladhand and catch up.

“’Nother reminder, folks,” Charlie called. “For you noobs, there are absolutely no recordings of any kind allowed in the lunchroom. Phones in pockets, please. Alpha’s here, so you’re not going to get away with it. Don’t even try.” Cas held up a thumbs up in acknowledgement. Charlie went back to the auction.

“That’s your guy, Dean,” Jack reminded him as Charlie moved on.

“Nah,” Dean said. “No fun by myself. I’ll stick with my own fellas. I have the cream of the crop at home anyway.”

“I mean, look at him though. If I were gay, I’d probably bid on him myself.”

Dean laughed. “You would hate Jonas, Jack. He’s a prick. He has no sense of humor at all. He’s all business.” He eyed the portly Dom, reconsidering. Annoying a Dom who wasn’t amused at his antics was fun, more fun for Dean than for the Dom, even if they always got their own back in payment out of Dean’s ass. It was worth it. But Dean had so much to do today. And with Michael and Cas both out of pocket. His heart wasn’t in it like it had been.

“I might surprise you,” Jack said lightly. “You know Jo can be pretty harsh when she’s on a strict alpha kick. There’s not a lot of laughter when she’s reading me the law. But it’s satisfying anyway.”

“You dog,” Dean teased, finding his lightness kicking back in, throwing off the maudlin coverlet that had tried to swamp him. “You know, I’ve known her my whole life. She even showed me her wolf avatar the day she discovered it. But she’s never let me in on the intimate stuff. Told me there needs to be a wall. What’s that all about, huh? A wall? For what? I tell the bitch everything, and she wants a wall? So, tell me, what’s the deal? Is she kinkier than she looks? She is, right?”

“She’s my mate, Dean. And my alpha. I can’t tell you anything she doesn’t want you to know. I owe her more than I do you.”

“Okay, right. Fair. I get it. I love her too, man. But just, like, she’s not a full Top, right? Just tell me that. She switches, right? Cause in the Keller panels she switches. They use her as a fulcrum bridge. So, she’s gotta be a switch. It’s logic.”

Jack laughed. “I won’t talk about Jo,” he reiterated. “But I can talk about myself. I’m a switch, Dean.”

“HA! Knew it!”

“I didn’t know I had a Bottom side before I Mated, but I do. I enjoy Jo’s alpha designation. And I also enjoy topping. I’ll admit, there’s not much power-exchange to what I like. It’s mostly vanilla sex. But it turns out that I like catching almost as much as pitching. Who knew?”

“I knew,” Dean pointed out before hiding in his water glass and watching Jonas lead a young woman from the legal department away by the hand. “Just couldn’t ever get Joanna Beth to admit it.”

“Female alphas have a tough go of it, Dean,” Jack reminded him. “They’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. They don’t truly fit anywhere. Expectations about their wants and needs are rife with misogyny and patriarchy, and it can be exhausting to address again and again. We should give her some space to be private about her preferences, Dean. Because we love her.”

“Well, look at you,” Dean said with a smile less patronizing than his words sounded. “She did good with you, Jack.”

“I consider myself the lucky one,” Jack told him seriously.

“Yeah, she is pretty great.”

“You know,” Jack caught Dean’s wrist casually but released it when Dean cast the grip a meaningful look. Jack went on unbothered. “She told me about her crush on you. We have no secrets. But I’m not worried. I’m not jealous. Jo has enough room in her heart for both of us, and you’ve been a good friend to her for a long time.”

Dean chuckled. “She tell you she only fessed up to that crush because of you?”

“Would it have mattered if you knew sooner?” Jack asked.

Dean raised his brows in a facial shrug and finished off his pie, thinking about his best friend. “Jack, she and I hand off the big job title in a few months. She’s gonna need a steady hand at her back for that. The job comes with a whole new level of pressure. She’s pretending she’s ready, but she’s actually freaking out on the inside. I’m gonna need you to take care of her, you get me. I can’t do it. It’ll look like I’m babying her, and that will undercut her authority.”

“She’s held that role before, Dean. Maybe not for long, but she did the job well.”

“I know, man. I know. But she had the lite version. Benny and Cas were fielding a lot of it because they were holding out hope that I’d come back. Plus, the Keller Institute adds a layer of complexity that wasn’t a part of it when she subbed in for me. And don’t get me wrong, Jack. Jo’s ready for this, really. But she’s going to freak out anyway. It takes time to wrap your head around it and find a rhythm. It’s bigger than anything she’s ever done before. Just be there for her, would you?”

“Of course,” Jack replied, solid. 

Dean couldn’t put his finger on it, but Jack just had a way about him. He seemed hopelessly naïve, but he never seemed dismayed by the awful circumstances of many of the Omegas he worked with. He was sweet and kind and tough as nails. And unflappable. He was perfect for Jo.

“Stop ogling my mate, Winchester,” Jo chided as she strolled up and squeezed in between Dean and Jack even though no one was sitting on Jack’s other side. Dean held his ground, but Jack spoiled it by shifting over happily.

“Hello, Jo,” Jack said brightly. “How was your morning?”

“Shitty,” Jo replied with a kiss. “But I’m better now.”

“Gawd, kill me now,” Dean grumbled loudly with a shove to the back of Jo’s head.

“Go fuck yourself, Dean,” she told him and then promptly ignored him. Dean collected trays, offering to take Jack’s, and stacking it on top of Cas’. Then he slid Jo’s toward him too, feigning clearing it as if he weren’t aware she’d only just sat down. He barely escaped a fork stabbing through his hand.

“Jesus, Harvelle! That almost got me!”

“My name is Lafitte, Winchester. Don’t be an ass.”

“Only because you didn’t have the pull to get your Alpha to adopt your name,” Dean gloated.

Cas called him just then. “Dean!” and he waved Dean over.

“Gotta go, _Lafitte,_ Alpha _Winchester_ is calling. You get the trays.”

Dean skipped away before her slap connected. Cas looked like he wanted to ask but thought better of it.

“Dean, I want you to meet Alpha Johansen. His son Erich is coming of age. He’s scheduled a pre-Heat contract scene and will be Keller testing soon after. His Pack is out of Lincoln. It’s sizable and holds a significant degree of sway in Lancaster County.”

Dean shifted tracks in his head effortlessly and introduced himself with formal gravity. “Dean Winchester, Alpha Johansen.” He stuck his hand out for a firm handshake, an alpha grip from them both. “It’s good to finally meet you. I’ve heard good things.”

“The name’s Rodrick. That was you driving up the bidding on my boy’s birthday present, wasn’t it?”

“Oh. That.” Dean blushed and rubbed the back of his neck with a glance toward a soft mat near the stage where Percy had the kid on his back with a slick finger in his ass and the small Omega dick in his mouth. “Sorry about that. Didn’t know it was a special occasion. Percy is worth it, Alpha. He’ll take good care of…”

“Erich.”

“Right. I wasn’t trying to drive up the bid. I was honestly looking for a nooner myself. Jesus, he looks young. Percy knows he’s a virgin?”

Cas leaned in. “I’ll leave you to it. It was good to meet you, sir. Dean, if you have time, would you show the Alpha around before he goes?”

“You bet, Cas. I live to do your bidding, my Alpha.” He leaned in for a kiss.

“Alpha Johansen,” Cas said with a nod and then took his leave.

“I can’t stay for a tour, alpha,” Rodrick mentioned, looking around. “Really shouldn’t have stayed for lunch. Need to get back. Packs go squirrely when their Alpha’s out of town, you know. But Erich’s been antsy lately. Nervous about this birthday. He needed a little quality time with the old man.”

“Sixteen?” Dean asked.

“Mm,” Alpha Rodrick replied. “Kid’s covering for it well, but he’s scared out of his mind. Talked me into letting him get his nerves worked out of him before the big test day, but I’m going to insist that if he’s doing that, that he does it right. None of _this_ hedonistic nonsense. I bought him a traditional scene. See if you people can knock his head back on right.”

Dean chuckled. Traditional Alphas retained some old-fashioned ideas about Omegas. But at least he’d taken his son somewhere safe. “When does he cycle next?” Dean asked. “You know it’ll be a doozy? Sounds like Erich knows already too.”

Rodrick nodded, watching the orgy build around him, unaffected. “Not until October. He lucked out on that front. We got time. He’s my oldest. Apple of my eye, and all that. Wanna do right by the kid. I’ve got folks back in the Pack telling me to do it by the old ways, let the Pack take care of him when his Heat hits. But you folks make sense to me, and I’m going to give you a chance. If this contract scene sets his feet back on the ground and his Keller test don’t knock him for a loop, I’ll give that Omega Services beta – Jack – a chance to talk me through the rest. That right there…” Rodrick nodded toward the mat where Erich’s head fell back, and his fists clenched at his sides. “That’s a good start. Kid needs to learn what his body can do. But it doesn’t get him through the hard stuff.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Dean agreed. “Alpha, if I can offer a little advice.” Dean pulled his own alpha out front, sizing up the Secondary of the man before him and finding himself weightier. He used that difference to affect significance in his tone. Rodrick’s pupils dilated, a sign his psyche registered the dynamic shift, and he listened attentively. “Keep Erich on the birth control we’re going to give him before his appointments here. If you don’t do anything else for your son, do that. Make sure he stays on it until he Mates, and then let him and his mate decide when the time is right to end it. The compound is safe long term. The whole staff here has used this cocktail for years, and we’re stable. It makes a world of difference for Omegas’ life choices, Alpha. It’ll mean a great deal to your son.”

Rodrick glanced away from Dean for a moment to check on his son. The kid looked to be in good hands, but he wasn’t trusting enough to let a strange man rim his boy without keeping watch. That was his oldest son, his only Omega for now. He nodded. “I agree. Wish we’d had the good meds when I was a pup.” He looked back at Dean and cocked his head. “Why do you care so much?”

Dean huffed at his own fervency. “There but for the grace of god, you know? I’m an oldest son, myself, Alpha. Felt like I dodged a bullet when my knot dropped. That got me thinking about why being Omega would have felt like such a death sentence, and it all grew from there. It shouldn’t mean a kid’s life is over just because he grows a channel. It should be a blessing, not a curse.”

Rodrick chuckled. “He’s a good kid,” he nodded. “Little flighty, maybe. But he’s smart. Wants to enlist like his old man. Go into high tech communications in the Navy. That wouldn’t have been thinkable in my day, Dean Winchester, not for an Ozzie. You and your teams here, you’re doing something important. Things are opening up for kids like Erich. But you still have a lot of convincing to do. I’m not putting my Omega son on an aircraft carrier that deploys for eight months if he’s not safe out there. And the Navy won’t assign him a high stakes role if he’s going to go wonky and put lives at risk. You get me? We gotta be sure. Your theories sound great. But the proof is in the pudding here, and the pudding is my kid.”

“Give us the chance to prove it, Alpha Johansen. We can show you how to support him, and we can teach Erich everything he needs to know to stay stable. Once he’s tested, we’re going to be obnoxious about getting him signed up for training. And if you’ve got younger kids, there are innovative programs for them as well. Safe ones. Talk to your Omega Services coordinator. You got Jack? That’s good. He’ll see to everything. It’s a whole new day for young wolves, Alpha.”

Rodrick laughed, watching a contractor who didn’t know his son outside of lapping at his virgin channel, cuddle and pet the boy with a warm smile on his face. “Cool it on the sales pitch, alpha. We’ll see.”

All around the room sessions were finishing up. With the limits proscribed on the contractors, no knotting, no reciprocation, the little scenelets were brief. Of course, as always, the scent of sex brought the wolves out in some of the observers, and several non-contractual _tête-à-têtes_ continued even as the contractors disengaged. Erich stumbled back toward his father a little dizzy but fully dressed and grinning.

“Happy birthday,” Dean offered the boy, who beamed at him.

Dean left them, short on time now. But connections like that were critical to their mission. Dean would never take lightly the chance to win over a Pack Alpha who clung to skepticism and had the reach to affect the opinions of others. It was that equation precisely that would make the biggest difference. It was worth the time investment. And that Alpha had noticed that Dean himself cared enough to spend time with him even without an appointment. It was forward propulsion the hard way, but Dean had never been afraid of hard work. Once an Alpha joined their cause full force, they had an ally forever.

“Crowley, you’re moments away from a summons to appear in my office for a full accounting,” Castiel rumbled into his conference line. He could sense the meeting room on the other end of the line fall still. “I’ve had it with the stalling. Implementation was scheduled for two months ago, and none of your excuses is acceptable. I am _not_ going to replace you. I am _not_ going to excuse you. And I am _not_ going to hear one more half-assed plea for another extension. Time is up. Get it done and get it on my desk and do it now!” Cas hated raising his voice in his official capacity, but the beta had a way of getting under his skin. There were initiatives in the wings fully planned and staged and waiting on nothing but funding, and Crowley had all the resources at his fingers to provide that, but he failed to live up to his promises quarter after quarter.

Dean would have come through. Dean always found a way.

Cas had even talked through Crowley’s excuses with his husband to get a lock on whether they were legit or not, and Dean had just rolled his eyes before unpacking each one and showing a viable path around them. But this wasn’t Dean’s job. It was Crowley’s. Crowley wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t incompetent. It was looking more and more like Cas needed to send someone out to Dayton to bring Crowley to heel, but he was loath to pull that trigger. Crowley needed authority over his staff. Undercutting him could have long-term repercussions. But the man was a brat of the same flavor as Nicholas Maraby, capable of burning everything around him down to get the attention his brat needed. Unlike Nick’s, Crowley’s brat was Secondary – a part of his beta, not his wolf, and that altered the response techniques. Crowley was no Bottom.

“Alpha, I assure you,” Crowley’s infuriating sycophantic voice purred over the line. “It’s coming. We’re close. There’s no hurrying government bureaucrats without greasing palms…”

“Do _not_ bribe government officials, Fergus!”

“Indeed,” Crowley replied. “And so we continue our efforts to prod them, and we wait.”

“You have one day,” Castiel growled. “Either send the contracts by the end of the day tomorrow or get on a plane and bring them to me by hand. Your choice.”

Billie slipped into Cas’ office with her brows raised, a sign that Castiel’s voice carried into the hall. He glanced at her and raised one finger.

“I live to serve, Alpha,” Crowley mollified. “Will there be anything else?”

“One day,” Cas repeated and then hung up. “Damn that man!” he exploded at Billie. “He’s doing this on purpose!”

“You’re going to have to deal with it, Cas. He’s testing you.”

“Goddamn beta-_Dominants!_ What _is_ it with them?” Cas threw himself back into his chair with his fists mussing his hair loose from the artful toss Dean had shaped it into that morning with some _product_ or other.

Billie cleared her throat and leveled him a meaningful glare.

He sighed, righting himself. “Present company excluded, of course.”

“Of course,” she replied. She dropped a file folder on his desk with a slapping noise.

“What are you doing here, Billie? You have a mate to bond with.”

Billie’s jaw tightened and she shook her head and dropped into Castiel’s visitor’s chair. “She went back to New York to close up shop. Got no one at home but the cat. Working helps.”

Cas steepled his hands and regarded her coolly.

“No, Castiel,” Billie said apropos of whatever he was thinking. “I made this mess. I’ll clean it up.”

He cocked his head and frowned. “It’s not a mess, beta. It’s a Mating. You’re going to be fine. Let it evolve organically. Don’t fight it, kiddo.”

“I’m not your kiddo, Castiel James.”

Cas grinned. He leaned forward and let the springs of his chair vault him to lean on his elbows. “It’s going to be good for you, Billie. Let your instincts build your bond. She’s an appropriate choice for you.”

“Not according to the readings,” Billie pointed out.

“Fuck the readings,” Cas replied. “Go with your gut. The bond formed. That means it’s a feasible connection.”

“She’s allo, Cas. This is insane. I’m going to let her down. I can’t… I just… I can’t. Jesus, I sound like Becky!”

He chuckled at that. “Look, Billie, this was a blindside. I know. But it’s not a terrible thing. She knows who you are. God knows she’s had every chance to choose someone else. But she wants _you,_ and she put everything on the line to prove it. She’s allo and you’re ace. So? Get her a partner to play with. Add that to your Dom routine. Have fun with how you portion it out. Get creative. And build a life for the two of you that honors you both. Platonic bonds can be just as intimate as sexual ones. You know that. You’re the one who convinced me of that, for fuck’s sake. So when you’re done moping and you pull your head out and _look_ at the gift Helene gave you, then take a breath and start laying down a foundation.”

“I don’t have time for this, Alpha,” Billie moaned with her head in her hands. That earned a full belly-laugh, reminding her she’d get no sympathy on that front from the poster boy of making time.

“You’ll make time,” he laughed. “I have full confidence.” Then he pulled the file she’d brought closer to him. “This for the Adolescent Training opening?”

“Max asked me to drop it off. Glance over it, but nothing’s changed. He needs your stamp in a couple of places, and then it’s done. We’re only waiting on Monroe to come through with movement on the ‘Minimum Age of Consent’ bill, and we’re off to the races.”

Cas opened the folder and began skimming the documents. “That and sustainable funding,” he grumbled. “We’ll be in beta-phase until we get the shackles off, and I need adolescent venues at every site by next year or it’ll stall.”

“Go to Dayton, Cas, and read Crowley the riot act. Plant his face in the dirt in front of everyone. Hell, do it out by the flagpole at the morning rush. Get that asshole’s attention. He’s baiting you.”

“And I _won’t_ be baited!” Cas snapped, irritated at being pushed by everyone. “I have far too much on my plate to lose three days in Ohio for something that should have been handled three months ago! I’ve got a pregnancy to manage, a new training program, a research breakthrough…!”

Billie held up her hand in a stop, and he desisted. “I know your calendar, Cas. None of that needs you at the helm. Nothing is more pressing than securing the funds we need for expansion and administering the new program. Bobby’s got Monroe. The pregnancy will manage itself for a bit. Kevin can handle the research. Max and Deacon have the new wing in hand. It’s time for you to go get Crowley. No one can do that but you.”

“What happens when I step down?” he asked only half rhetorically. “How is Miles going to manage?”

Billie laughed. “Miles has ways, Castiel. As do I, which is what you’re really asking. We’ve been talking it over. It’s not lost on either of us that we’re setting precedents for the entire world to emulate. Seems to me that the only real difference between an Alpha administrator and a beta is weight and enforcement. So I’m going to carry a big stick wherever I go and let her do the backup for me, kind of _daemon_ of my very own to enforce my will.”

He nodded, still perusing the complex final drafts of his and Dean’s brainchild for preparing young teens for adulthood. “Just be careful with your big stick, beta. Josie is ambitious. If you don’t have her complete loyalty, you could be setting yourself up for a coup, end up with a demon at your side instead of a daemon. You’ll want a Claim on her, and that isn’t going to be an easy tumble. Anything less than a DF is doomed to dissolve too fast to be any use. She’s got an up on you, Billie. You’re going to need her help to make a Claim stick. You can’t topple her on your own.”

“Dean Claimed your ass,” she noted. “It can be done.”

“Agreed,” he said with a wry expression. “But it requires an alliance with the strongest designation of the person being Claimed if you don’t have the weight to do it naturally. Dean had help. But Josie’s strongest designation is her wolf. It’s going to be difficult to topple that.”

“We’ll see. I think she may have a Primary that can muzzle her wolf.”

Cas allowed the moment to lengthen without blinking until Billie looked away with a huff. “I’m working on it, all right? I’ve got this. Trust me.”

Cas picked up his pen and jotted his initials under a brightly colored arrow, transferring steely blue eyes to the paperwork. “What else?” he asked without pausing his reading. “You’re not still here so I can pick at your professional decisions. What’s up? I’m busy.”

Billie sighed heavily, a sign she had news he wasn’t going to like. Cas raised his eyes without lifting his head.

“Wilhelmina…” He drew it out, knowing it would get under Billie’s skin.

“That is not my name, you ass.”

He laughed, closed the file, dropped the pen with a flourish, and leaned back, crossing his ankles on his desk. “Let’s have it.”

“There are rumors again,” she told him.

“Ah,” he sighed. “Who is it this time?”

“Max,” she told him without wincing. “They’re saying he rose to the Omega lead because he takes your knot without bitching about it the way Dean does.”

Cas rolled his eyes and put his feet back on the floor. “Well, at least this one makes logical sense.”

“This will undermine his decisions if you don’t address it, Alpha.”

“Then let’s address it,” Cas said decisively as he put his feet back on the floor. “Any suggestions? I’m aware it’s not your job anymore, but I value your opinion.”

“Go with shock and awe on this one, sir. We can’t play up Omega purity culture. The kid is more promiscuous than Balthazar. He reports his outside sexual encounters in a spreadsheet.”

Cas laughed. He clicked around in his computer files looking for a template Billie had strummed up years ago when rumors of profligate use of his wiles were constant. He would rephrase it for this circumstance and distribute copies into every inbox, tweaking it to burn their eyeballs as they read. “It astounds me that we must still contend with slut-shaming what with the results of our research. Copious sexual encounters are good for young Omegas. Good for Max. That boy is a paragon of Lupin decency and a damn funny guy. And he’s never had any contact – tactile or visual – with my knot. So putting these rumors to rest should be a simple matter. I’ll send this out at four. Warn him, would you? Tell him he’s not required to dignify the rumor with a response, but he is to report every untoward conversation or insinuation to you. Alert me if we need to double down. Are there any specifics I need to know for the memo? Is the rumor wider than our institution?”

“It’s a standard trope, boss. It’s probably leaked to the satellites, but I don’t anticipate wider spread. If you word that memo well, it’ll probably leak to the press, so keep his name out of it directly.”

“You’re sure about shock and awe? He doesn’t deserve to become a pariah for someone’s loose lips and wild imagination. Can we tamp it down by tracing it to the guilty parties?” Cas tapped his keyboard with loose fingers. “I can make time to address it directly, even if it requires multiple iterations.”

She shook her head. “No, we need to address this institutionally. It’s got wings.”

“How the hell am I just hearing about it then?” Cas blurted.

Billie pursed her lips and averted her eyes meaningfully.

Cas huffed. “I don’t have time to train Mick. I need you.”

Billie leaned in close. “What you need is a handler, Cas, but you hired an _assistant._ It’s your own fault. He’s not up to this.”

He shook his head. “I promised to give him a chance.”

“Fine. You gave him a chance. And he let a harmful rumor metastasize under his nose, and it’s threatening a competent Omega professional in a company that promises to protect Omega employees from bullshit like that. We must be better than this, Castiel. Your representation IS this company. You can’t allow this kind of thing. Mick failed…” she asserted definitively. “Fire. Him.”

Cas sighed again. She had a point. But Mick needed the job. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll take him with me to Dayton, and I’ll make the journey unpleasant. I’ll know by the time we return if he’s got the chops for this assignment.”

Billie stood up and approached the door. “Send the memo through me, boss. It needs to come through as a team message.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He typed rapidly. “Also, you want to tweak my wording.”

“Of course I do,” she replied. “Because you suck at subtlety.” As an afterthought, she said, “You know what would help with Mick? Sic Dean on him.”

She shifted clear of the door when Mick-the-new-assistant poked his head in with a single abrupt knock. “I’m not interrupting, am I?” he asked as he slipped in. The alpha-Neutral seemed to take up far less room than Castiel’s former assistant, hesitant in his bearing. Billie eyed him down the length of her nose.

“We were just finishing up, Mick. Come in.” Cas returned to the manilla file folder on his desk and shuffled through until he found where he’d left off.

“Yes, Sir. I adjusted the agenda for today’s Top Staff meeting like you asked. And I shuffled tomorrow’s meetings to free you up at lunch. Will there be anything else?”

Cas finalized the signatures for Max, closed the folder and handed it to Mick. “Give this to Max Banes. Tell him I said he did an outstanding job, and that Billie will be phoning him on a different matter within the hour.”

“You know, Mick,” Billie added from beside the door. “When you fix the agenda, you can just fix the agenda. Doesn’t require a visit in person. Also, you’re going to need to pack a bag.”

Mick looked round. “Am I going somewhere? Alpha?”

Cas shot Billie an exasperated look. “Yes,” he answered. “Yes, I need to go to Dayton for a few days, and you’re coming with me.”

“Now? Alpha, it’s Charlotte this weekend.”

Behind his back, Billie mouthed, “Wow.”

“Are you planning to _attend_ the Charlotte convention?” Cas asked, befuddled.

“No, Sir. But I always watch the live broadcasts of the ballroom panels. Your husband is a hoot.”

Cas blinked up at him, at a complete loss. “Billie, that will be all,” he said without looking away from Mick. “I’ll see you in the meeting.”

“Yes, Alpha,” she said in a dead-calm voice and left without a ripple.

Cas continued to stare at Mick.

“Too much?” the man asked his boss with a wince.

“Uh, yeah. Tone it down a little. You’re coming off as a rube. And there’s no need to disguise yourself around Billie. She’s trustworthy.”

“Sorry, Alpha, it’s just, this hiding in plain sight thing, it’s easier to do if I go method instead of turning it on and off depending on who’s in the room.”

“Mick, you’re not a double-agent.” Cas rubbed his forehead. “You’re my assistant in truth and I need you governing my media presence. The only thing we need to keep understated is the degree to which you serve as personal security.”

“Right. Yeah. I got it.” Mick’s English accent was thick, regional, and faked. The man was Irish, but he had chosen an affected persona, and Cas didn’t care enough either way to call him on it. He faked it well enough to pass. Except with Billie, who noticed immediately and had despised him ever since.

“Please arrange for the two of us to travel to Dayton on Thursday afternoon, staying through Sunday night. You have until we lift off to decide how to explain to me why I had to learn of a prevalent unfounded rumor of untoward sexual conduct between me and an Omega subordinate through my _ex-_assistant instead of hearing it early enough to stop it at its roots from you. That will be all. Thank you for adjusting the agenda and tomorrow’s appointments. In future, Billie is correct. I do not require a confirmation in person that you’ve completed assigned tasks. I don’t require confirmation at all, for that matter. Please just do as I ask.”

Mick blanched. “Sir, the rumor. I didn’t give it any credence because…”

“Not now, alpha. Later. We have the entire flight to Ohio to discuss it.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“You’re dismissed. Please be on time to the meeting. That gives you…” Cas checked the time on his computer screen, “ten minutes to walk that folder to the new wing, find Max, put it into his hand, congratulate him on a task well-done, and return. If you need to pee, do it quickly.”

“I…I… Yes, Sir.” Mick bowed his head formally and left, leaving behind a scent of humiliation and outrage and a vague sense that he had almost clicked his heels in a faux-military salute. Cas had pissed him off, but the alpha bit it back.

Cas ran his tongue over his teeth, hating himself just a little. But he couldn’t pussyfoot around this. He needed someone he could trust, not a fawning sycophant. God knew he already had enough of those. With the company growing faster than ever, the culture in the halls was shifting corporate in a way Cas could no longer fully control. Many of the new employees hadn’t been indoctrinated with the same sense of Pack that the old hands were. Cas found the doe-eyed lingerers outside his office and near his conference rooms an irritating distraction. He harried them rudely when he found them, but they seemed to multiply anyway. It had come to him rebuking all of the managers of The Facility to keep their employees reined in or suffer his displeasure, and he had told Billie he held her personally responsible for loiterers. 

Dean had found it funny. Until he didn’t.

And now the rumors were starting back up.

“Hey, boss,” Dean opened the door and invited himself in. “You hungry?”

“We just ate lunch,” Cas protested, but Dean wasn’t talking about food. He grinned and slid onto Castiel’s desk with his knees to either side of Cas’ chair and he leered down at Cas’ lap. Cas laughed. “There isn’t enough time to do to you what I’d like, Pet.”

“Then just take a minute, babe. I felt you, C.J., through the bond. Felt you ready to blow your top, and now’s not the time for it. Wanna spank my ass? It’ll make you feel better.”

Cas grinned, matching his husband’s energy. He felt worlds better just having Dean’s hips under his hands. “I would, but then I would have to attend the meeting with a painful erection, and that would defeat the purpose. I will take a kiss though.”

Dean leaned over and planted his lips on Castiel’s, reveling as always. He sat back up and scooted back to a more stable position and ran a thumb across Cas’ lower lip. “Who put the burr under your saddle? Want me to take care of it for you?”

“Oh, would you? Yes, that would be greatly appreciated.”

“Who am I ganking?”

“It’s Billie, Dean. She’s out of control.”

Dean’s mouth fell open, and his face paled. “Oh. Uh, really?”

Cas laughed, standing and tugging his husband to the edge of the desk and grinding his hips in to feel a flash of delicious friction. “Damn, I love you so much. The things you do for me.”

Dean preened. “Anything for my Alpha.”

“Everything’s fine, love,” Cas assured him. “Just a little disagreement with my new assistant. We’re working things out.”

“Ugh, that guy. You’re kidding with that guy, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Speaking of which,” Cas said with a tilt to his head. “Did you know there was a rumor about me and Max Banes?”

“Oh, please. It’s a half-assed clumsy attempt at smearing you.”

“Billie says differently,” Cas told him. “She’s worried it’ll stick to Max even after I’m clear. I wouldn’t expect you to miss that point if it were a concern, Dean. Is she overblowing it? We’re planning a slash and burn site-wide memo.”

“Go ahead and lay waste,” Dean agreed. “But I don’t think it’s got the sticking power Billie expects. Your reputation here is solid. Like water off a duck’s back. And if folks don’t believe it of _you,_ then there’s no mud left to sling at Max. Besides, that kid, man, he’s got friends. He can look after himself. He’s like the Omega version of you. Thinks in five directions at once. I wouldn’t even be surprised to hear he _started_ that rumor for his own purposes.”

“Dean! That’s an appalling assertion! He’s in a vulnerable position and completely at the mercy of a misogynistic society. He shouldn’t also have to suffer the inequity of alphas making light of the situation.”

Dean raised his hands, palms out. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Look, if you could get to know him better, you’d understand what I mean. He’s not as vulnerable as a lot of Omegas. He’s got a cunning mind, and he makes use of it, a lot like you do yours. ‘S all I’m saying. I know you have to keep your distance these days. And I’m sorry about that. The dude is good people.” Dean slid to his feet. “C’mon. Let’s get there early and scowl at people to freak them out.”

Cas landed a blazing swat on his ass as Dean reached his office door.

Dean knelt comfortably on the floor in front of Michael, bent double onto his elbows, nude, silent, still, flat-backed. Michael’s ankles crossed where they rested between his shoulder blades as he lounged in a cushioned chair and made use of his mate as a footstool. Michael’s view of Dean’s ass, quite explicit but artfully blocked by his own outstretched legs drew his eyes out of his tablet again and again. The pups played in their pajamas on the floor, up late and growing sleepy. They left their daddy to his Sub work. Explaining the expectation to them helped, but it was the scents surrounding Michael and Dean as a pair that had the biggest impact, made them temporarily unapproachable.

Michael kept an eye on his brood, content. No one was cranky yet, despite the late hour they’d allowed bedtime to stretch to allow Michael a chance to enjoy them for a few moments after his shift. Through the intercom, April’s playing accompanied their soft wind-down. It cast a drowsy spell on the whole room. As often happened, Kat sat beside Alex sharing a colorful book with him, dutifully turning the pages, and explaining the story she knew by heart. Alex named each pictured character for her, pointing them all out and looking to his sister to be certain she agreed with his assessments. Several feet away, Emma and Jimmy were building something. It had started as a tower of Legos, but they emptied several bins looking for building supplies and were now employing items of all kinds in their monstrosity of an edifice.

It was peaceful.

Dean shifted slightly, resetting his knees. Michael raised his feet to allow his Sub room to adjust and then set them back in place. Michael felt a purr rise from his mate, echoed within his own head and through both bonds, and he was content. Tonight was Michael’s night to make use of Dean. He didn’t regret trading a hard lash for a soft exercise in simple submission.

The door opened, admitting Cas with Kate at his heels. Pups looked up and brightened.

“Papa, we’re reading,” Kat informed him. “Come see!”

Cas beamed, catching Emma up into a tight hug and then dropping onto his knees to embrace Jimmy as well. The monstrosity they had been building toppled noisily. “What on earth are my children doing out of bed this late?” he asked them. Giggles all around. Alex took the book in one hand, dragging it along the ground, and took Kat by the other to lead her to the imposing figure in the middle of the room.

Michael calmly set his tablet on the table beside him next to his wine glass. “Just a one-off, Alpha,” he explained in a voice that didn’t break the hypnotic pulse of April’s piano. “There’s no harm in an occasional late night in PJ’s.” Michael set his feet on the floor to either side of Dean’s calves.

Cas nodded as pups crowded him from every direction, settling into his lap, leaning against his shoulders, touching him for support only Papa could supply. He took the book from Alex and opened it, wrapping arms around Emma, Jimmy, and Alex while Kat peered around his shoulder. “One story, and then it’s off to bed with all of you,” he decreed.

Warm backs and heads settled back into his body to listen and snuggle. Michael leaned back in his chair and tapped Dean’s hip with his foot to gain his eyes and then gestured him up into his lap. Dean’s eyes retained their soft glaze as he perched sideways on Michael’s lap and sought his mate’s scent glands with his nose. Michael cinched him in close.

“Papa, Daddy was be good for O-Pop,” Jimmy informed Cas. “We didn’t int-rupt. O-Pop said let him work.”

“That’s very polite of you,” Cas praised. “Thank you for listening so well. That makes Papa proud of you. Shall we read?”

Jimmy nodded with fascinated wide eyes, happy to have pleased his father and happier still to be in his lap with his attention bestowed. Cas turned to the first page, one hand holding the book and the other stroking down Kat’s back. He read to them, lightening his tone, leaning into the story, and animating his face playfully. Heads grew heavy against his chest. Kat sat down beside him and let her weight rest against his hip and Emma’s thigh. By the time the story ended, Jimmy was fast asleep with his mouth hanging loose. Alex slumped bonelessly in the middle, and Emma sucked her fingers, serving as a support for Alex and Kat both.

Kate stepped in and collected Jimmy, easing him up without waking him. Cas nudged Emma slightly, and she found her feet, still sucking two fingers, barely awake, moments from succumbing to tears. Cas managed to stand while bringing the other two up with him, and he freed a pointer finger for Emma to cling to. Two heads found his shoulders, and his daughter trailed along on sleepy feet as he led her from their play-space into their bedroom.

He glanced toward Michael and Dean with a gentle look of approval at the slacked look of glazed-eyed peace on Dean’s face. Dean followed him with a lazy expression, hardly shifting at all.

Cas paused briefly beside Michael’s chair and spoke very softly.

“I’m going to need to steal him from you when I return, Michael. Apologies for that, but he and I need to speak before I leave tomorrow.”

Michael nodded against Dean’s head. He answered just as softly and ran a hand through Emma’s hair, a simple caress. “We’re finishing up, sir. He did very well. He’ll be ready to re-emerge shortly. Just give us a moment.”

Emma sniffled sadly. She looked up and raised her arms. “Papa, carry me too,” she pleaded.

Grandma found them and collected Emma, shushing her tenderly when the pup complained. Grandma was no Cas. But even Alpha only had so many arms.

“Nooo,” Emma whined all the way into the bedroom. Cas followed at a sedate pace.

Michael kissed the side of Dean’s head and nudged him into sitting upright. “You with me?” Michael asked.

“Mmm,” Dean answered, blinking heavily. He stretched sore muscles. “I’m good. You… you get what you needed?” He nuzzled into Michael’s throat, behind his ear, into his hair. His muscles were soft and warm. His knees and elbows glowed a bright, irritated pink.

“You were so, so good for me, Dean. I enjoyed every moment.”

Dean smiled sleepily. “Happy to be of service, sir,” he answered.

Michael rubbed Dean’s thighs, working blood back into motion. “What does Alpha need you for tonight? Are you up for a talk with him? I’ll make excuses for you if you’re not. I can pour you into bed and release you for breakfast time to him. That might be better.”

“Nah, I’m okay, man.” Dean rocked to his feet and stretched his arms over his head. He yawned. “Gimme kiss. I’ll come to bed in a few. Leave me the outside.”

The sound of piano music desisted, leaving an oddly empty feeling in the pups’ little playroom. Michael pulled Dean close for a warm, sloppy kiss, savoring the warmth of his body and the laxity of his muscles. “Summon me if you need me, Dean,” Michael told him.

Dean chuckled. “I’m good, love. Go to bed.”

Castiel returned to hear the end of their exchange, and he chuckled as well, just a gentle affection. 

Michael wordlessly pointed out the folded pile of clothing that Dean had discarded. Dean winked. Michael clicked off the intercom, buried his hands in his pockets, nodded respectfully at Cas, and then left at a stroll.

Dean pulled on a pair of boxer briefs, turning his back on his husband. “Flying out tomorrow?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Billie agrees with you about Crowley’s provocations. She’s certain it’s intentional,” Cas admitted. “But she agrees with me that it’s something I need to attend to myself. “ He dragged an empty toy bin into the middle of the room and knelt to begin clearing toys. “I’m taking Mick with me. I need some private time with him so we can clarify expectations.”

“You’re taking the jet?” Dean leaned over to help clean the clutter.

“Flying coach isn’t feasible anymore. I admit you were right about that.”

Dean huffed and plonked down onto the floor on his butt, stretching out to collect some toys that had rolled under the art table. “I’m always right, C.J.”

“And humble as well,” Cas joked.

“It’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect.” Dean tossed a couple of plastic stacking cups the length of the room into their specific bin, landing them perfectly.

“Indeed, how do you stand it?” Cas teased.

“It’s not easy,” Dean admitted.

It didn’t take long to tidy the room. Cas settled on the squashy couch and beckoned Dean. Dean straightened the bins along the wall and then ambled closer to his husband with his head cocked to one side. He collapsed onto the floor in front of Cas with his legs out wide, leaning back on his hands.

In the doorway, April appeared, demure, her hands clasped before her. “Sir? Do you need anything before I go to bed?”

“Pups are in bed, Kitten. I have nothing planned between us tonight. Go on to bed. I’ll take care of you in the morning after I run.”

“Night, Dean,” she said with a soft, happy drawl. “Goodnight, Cas.”

They both bid her goodnight. 

Dean shifted to lean forward and play with the weave of the rug. He traced it with a finger and tucked a loose thread under.

“Don’t be nervous, Dean,” Cas soothed. “This shouldn’t be a hard conversation.”

“Says you,” Dean replied without looking up.

“What are you expecting?” Cas leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

Dean looked up but then returned to his study of the floor. “I’m expecting to puke my guts up before my flight to Charlotte.”

“Dean?”

Dean rolled up to his knees and knee-walked to wrap his arms around Castiel’s waist and rest his forehead against the man’s belly. Fingers instantly wove through his hair.

“I hate flying, Cas.”

“I know. Try to remember your coping strategies. Michael and Meg and Jo will be with you the whole way. You’re going to be okay, Dean. It’s scary but survivable.”

“Terrifying is the word. Scary is Dad-duty for an entire day by myself. This is so much worse.”

“Dean, we need to talk about Friday. Last Friday,” he clarified to head off any deliberate diversions.

“Friday the thirteenth, you mean,” Dean amended darkly. “The Friday when your wolf played handball with my skull.”

Cas laughed. “If you want to put it like that.”

Dean sat back on his heels. The blue in Castiel’s eyes glowed faintly in the lamplight. Dean shook his head, letting the last of his Tertiary go.

“I don’t get it, Cas. I don’t get what happened. I don’t get the message you or your wolf or whoever was trying to send. I thought it should clear things up, but I’m even more confused.”

“I’m not surprised,” Cas said. “Come up here beside me. Kneeling on the floor in front of me isn’t going to help us do this right.”

Dean rocked to his feet and then fell into the softness of the pups’ couch with his back to the armrest and he threw his legs over Cas’ thighs. “Is it okay if I’m mostly naked?”

“I think I can manage,” Cas said with a lilt of a tease in his voice and a pinch to Dean’s big toe.

Dean scratched his chin and nibbled at his lower lip, leaning back. “You gave me exactly what I wanted from you, man. But now you’re going to take it away. You are, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Cas said. “I meant what I said, Dean. We are not going to play without a contract structure between us. That’s not negotiable.”

Dean looked away. His chest rose and fell in a magnificent sigh.

“I understand that you’re disappointed.”

“Your wolf isn’t concerned about a contract,” Dean pointed out. “That was your wolf on Friday, right? Were you there too? Were you there at all?”

“I was there,” Cas answered. His lashes spread aesthetically against his cheeks as he looked at his hands in his lap. “And I know that what my wolf did must have felt like the kind of overwhelming no-brakes explosion that you want. But, Dean, let me reiterate, we are not throwing out the contract.”

“So you’ve said.” Dean refused to meet his eyes.

Cas smacked his lips. “Talk to me through your alpha, Dean. Why do you want this? I get the brat’s perspective. I need to understand what’s underneath it all.”

“Does it matter? Won’t change anything.”

“That’s your Primary brat talking,” Cas reminded him with his head lowered to catch Dean’s eyes. “I asked for your Secondary. I need you to level with me.”

Dean sat up and crossed his legs Omega-style. He licked his lips. “You keep saying that in a fit of passion, your wolf could break me. Right? But that’s not true. Cas, in a fit of passion it might fracture a bone or leave a bad bruise. But it’s not gonna do anything that won’t heal. Not to me. And a chance to feel that storm wash me out to sea…man, I don’t have the words to describe what the feeling is worth to me.”

“Your alpha agrees with that notion?”

Dean glanced away again and then regrouped, shifted his seat, and looked back to his husband. “Honestly, I don’t entirely understand it from my alpha. But my wolf wants it. My front-brain wants it. And it isn’t just that I want to play harder than you’re willing to go. There are times that I need to be humiliated, put in my place, you know?”

“I do know. I understand what Submissive means.” Cas cocked his head, thinking. “But I also know that you don’t want a twenty-four-seven arrangement. I know that you need space to be alpha and to stand upright, fully dressed, fully in command of your own fate…”

“No, that’s it, though, Cas. Fully dressed? Yeah. That’s true. But fully in command of my own fate? I really don’t think so. I think I want you to set me a peg or two lower than I am now. Shake me by the hair until my teeth rattle. Do it on a whim, man. Take me to the woodshed for no damn reason, not a frikken’ scene. For real. For real, C.J.”

“Why have you set limits in our contract if you want me to disregard them?” Cas pressed. “Why would you confront me, appropriately so, I might add, every time I’ve pressed the limits that _you_ set?”

Dean scrubbed his hands through his hair, scratching his scalp as he fell backward into the arm of the couch and setting his feet flat before him with his knees up. He took a moment, dragging his hands over his face with a deep breath. “Okay, look. The thing is, what I try to do is to play nicely, be safe, follow the rules like a good boy, like you want me to do. But what I _want_ is for _you_ to tell me to stop whining and take whatever you dole out. That means that if you put apes to sucking me off without asking me to sign off on it first, then that’s what happens. No complaining. No refusing. No bitching and moaning about it afterward because it made me squicky. At the core of all of this is that I want to trust you, and if we never test that because we’re always following a script, then where does trust come in?”

For long moments they stared into each other’s eyes.

Finally…

“No, Dean. Not like that. It’s not worth the risk.”

Dean slumped backward. His mouth opened and closed a few times as he worked out how to reply. “Can you explain Friday to me, then?” he croaked out eventually with his eyes back on his lap. “Why then? Why not again?”

“I needed to get your attention,” Cas told him. “This is not blanket permission to turn up the volume every time you want to unleash my wolf. You don’t decide that for me.”

“Did _you_ decide, C.J., or did he?” Dean licked his lips and raised his eyes.

“Do not mistake me, my love. I always decide.”

“You didn’t lose control?”

“No.”

Dean nodded, thinking. “But you did remove his leash. And you stepped out of his way.”

“I did. Yes.”

“Would you do that more often if I asked you to?” Dean glanced up carefully seeking to catch Cas feeling caught out.

But Cas only watched him back, studying Dean’s face. “On rare occasions, yes. Not in the way you’re asking for.”

“Whose was the Jedi voice back there?” Dean asked without preamble. “Wolves are abstract, Cas. And they don’t have language capabilities. _Someone_ inside your melon either posed as your wolf or translated for it. What was all that talk about fear and pain and shit?”

Cas chuckled in spite of himself. “My wolf enjoys his flair for the dramatic. I’ll give him that.”

“That was no wolf, Castiel. Wolves don’t give a fuck about psychotherapy…”

“Ah, but you’re wrong there, my Pet. My wolf is surprisingly perceptive, especially where you and April are concerned. He’s been studying you a long time. It’s critical that he understand what motivates, what drives you, if he’s going to be effective as your Dominant. I think it reasonable to believe that while the words weren’t his, that the insight behind them was.”

“Whose words were they, then? Your Secondary’s, right? Your alpha teamed up to give your wolf a mouthpiece?”

Cas set a hand on the top of Dean’s foot and squeezed. “Yes. As I say, they share a certain flare for the dramatic. But, Dean, had I had the chance to voice what my wolf perceived, it would be different only in the grandiosity of the verbiage. He’s right about you. I’m sure of it. I sense you flailing for a new sense of self, one that doesn’t anchor in a sense of embedded shame. And I believe that a demand to relinquish all boundaries in our play is a manifestation of that – one that you will regret once this moment in your evolution passes.”

“Come on, Cas. Give me something. I don’t believe for a second that I’m the only one salivating at the idea here.”

Cas chuckled. “No, perhaps not. But you are the only one throwing caution to the wind so recklessly. We are not children, Dean Michael. I love you too much to risk you for a sexual high. Highs like that are fleeting. You and me…hey, look at me, baby… You and me, we’re not fleeting. We’re worth more than a flash of gratification, even an intense one, even one that feels like it’s going to linger. Because they don’t, Dean. They don’t linger. We must build our relationship on things that last. Things like love and communication, on honesty and trust.”

“I trust you, Cas. That’s the point.”

“I know. And I’m honored. Don’t doubt that.” Cas licked his lips and smiled tightly. “But you can demonstrate that in so many healthy ways. I don’t want to hurt you the way I did on Friday. Not like that, Dean.” Cas eyed the fading yellow at the apple of Dean’s cheek. “I want to hurt you beautifully. In ways that lift you up. Not in ways that suck you under.”

“Are we back where we started?” Dean asked in a clipped voice. 

“We don’t have to be,” Cas told him with his eyes narrowed. “I can make a few allowances. I can make a bit of a change to the way I carry out unplanned scenes.”

“And what’s that?” Dean asked, sounding not especially hopeful.

“If it’s all the same to you, Pet, I’ll keep it to myself for now; allow you to acclimatize over time.” Cas raised his chin, and Dean sat up a little straighter.

“Really?”

“That pleases you?” 

Dean blinked and nodded shyly. He discerned the Alpha’s Secondary in the wording, and it made his dick twitch.

“Also, as always, while the contract stays, what you choose to include as far as your personal limits is your choice, not mine. Do not blame me for avoiding acts that you specified should be avoided.” Castiel raised his brows, wrinkling his forehead. And Dean had to concede that one.

“Finally, to the heart of the matter,” Cas continued. “Let’s get this crunch point behind us once and for all.”

Dean frowned. “Crunch point?”

“Dean, when you feel slighted by my wolf’s refusal to slap you across the face in response to your backtalk or when my alpha allows no daylight between what you specify in our contract and what we do in the playroom, that is not a concession on my part; that is _my choice,_ and I want one thing to be crystal clear so that we never need to revisit it.”

“Sir?”

_”If_ I am in charge between the two of us, then I am in charge. That means that if I choose softer, not harder; more civilized, not more savage; control over bedlam, then that is _my choice_ to make, and I expect your obedience. If I were to choose vanilla sex for the rest of our lives, then I expect your obedience. If I were to command you to strip bare at the door every time you walk into _my_ house, then I expect your obedience. If I direct you to stand alpha-proud at my shoulder and back my word to the entire world, I expect your obedience.”

Dean blushed and lowered his head while keeping his eyes on his Sir’s. “Yessir.”

“Again!”

“Yes, Sir!”

“You have confused the fact that I frequently choose to hold myself to a strict level of civility with the notion that I have given up my head-of-house rights to go balls-to-the-wall. You are mistaken, Pet. So let me be perfectly clear. I understand I am not employing my wolf to its greatest capacity. I am equally aware that should I so choose, I could set you back on your heels until your alpha rarely sees blue sky at all. It isn’t that I am fearful of behaving that way, Dean Michael. It’s that I don’t choose to. And as we agreed at our wedding, and before…and after, for that matter, those choices are _mine_ to make. Not yours. If you want to file a grievance, do so politely. Ask for what you want. You will not always get it, Pet. But you will always be heard. If you throw tantrums, you will be reprimanded. If you disobey me, you will be punished. Is that not what you want from this union?”

Dean’s mouth felt like Death Valley in June. He recalled vaguely that speaking audibly somehow involved lungs and air flow and something about his tongue. But none of that clicked for the moment.

Castiel took pity.

“A nod will do.”

Dean tossed his chin toward his chest with no poise or coordination, blushing.

“Good. Then we understand one another. I will not forget what my wolf had to say on Friday, Winchester, and neither should you. Both its actions and its words hold profound significance between us. Do not expect to goad me into repeating that performance. It won’t happen. I make the rules in this house, in this marriage, and in our Tertiary exploits. Unless you’ve changed your mind about acceding to that – and if you have, I promise nothing but will hear you out – I expect this discussion to put your outrage to rest.”

“No complaints, sir,” Dean whispered hoarsely.

“Come,” Cas summoned. Dean launched himself into the man’s arms, worming around until he straddled Cas’ hips and refusing to admit he might ever need to come up again for air.

“Did you enjoy your evening with Michael?” Cas asked, hours later with Dean still on his lap and fingers kneading into Dean’s ass muscles.

“Yeah,” Dean answered, kiss-drunk and sleepy. “He’s good at taking me there, Cas, even without a lot of work. Something he does with his bond. With his side of it, I mean. Something I can’t replicate when the tables turn and it’s my turn.”

Cas hummed, a bit drunk himself. “No need to try to mimic him,” he advised sagely. “You’re plenty talented enough in your own right. I have faith in you, Dean. Your mate is astoundingly well-adjusted. You’re doing everything right.”

“So you’ve said,” Dean murmured, seeking Cas’ lips again. “Fuck me before you leave me for Crowley?”

“Ugh!” Cas rebelled. “What horrifying wording. Take that back this instant!”

“Don’t go, baby. I’ll call off for Charlotte, and you cancel Dayton, and we’ll take advantage of the free babysitting and hide in a hotel somewhere and fuck each other blind.”

“Tempting,” Cas told him with a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Can’t do it. But here. What I can do is give you a little bit of an ache to distract you on your way to Charlotte.” Cas stood him up with a grip to his hips and divested him of his boxer briefs.

“I don’t leave until Friday morning, Alpha. Needs to be a helluvan ache to last that long.”

“On your knees. You have to the count of fifteen to get me hard. I’m going to penetrate you with whatever moisture you leave on my penis, so that is up to you, Pet.”

Dean grinned and dropped to his knees, swallowing as much of Cas as he could get his mouth onto. He broke free as Cas was counting down and peeked up. “Say that word,” he smirked.

Cas chuckled. _”Moist,”_ he teased before shoving Dean back onto his cock and driving his hips upward. It didn’t take to the count of fifteen, but Cas slowed his count toward the end anyway.

At the end, Dean slurped up the length of his oral fixation, taking his dribbles with him, leaving a minimal coating of spit that earned an eyeroll from his husband and a hearty whack to his ass. Cas picked him up by his hair and armpit and threw him lengthwise on the pups’ couch on his belly with his face crammed in the crack at the junction of arm, seat, and back. Cas smacked the inside of his thigh to get him to open a space, and then he took to his knee behind his Sub, aimed after swiping a spit-slick thumb across Dean’s hole, and pressing firmly in.

Dean’s breath caught. He clenched.

“Stop that,” Cas rebuked. He clutched Dean’s cheeks and pressed them outward, using the foot braced on the floor to muscle his way deeper.

Dean wheezed and white-knuckled the arm of the couch. He craned his neck to seek fresh air and keened.

“Relax, Pet, and let me in.”

Dean huffed desperately. He found his knees and pressed upward and back, curling his spine, opening his hips, bearing down, giving his Top more space.

Cas bottomed out to his knot and then held as Dean breathed through the burn. The Dom placed his mouth right behind Dean’s ear, bringing chills with his breath. “Defy me at your peril, Pet,” he breathed. Dean’s shudder wracked his entire body. He was still mid-tremble when Cas pulled back and then slammed in again. 

On occasion the Alpha could make love with tender care, bringing shivers of pleasure to Dean’s body. But after a discussion like tonight’s, after the completion of a Rut, shortly before he left home for days, the moment demanded power, and power was what he delivered. Dean’s arched back ached. His asshole felt skewered and roasted. His grip on the couch as he pressed backward throbbed. 

Pups woke and climbed out of bed, but Kate shepherded them back before they made it past the jack-and-jill lavatory to the playroom.

“Come for me, Dean Michael,” Alpha whispered, barely audible over desperately hoarse gulped breaths. Dean shunted his hips under, rolled his shoulders, engaged his thighs to pull one long, sublime friction-filled stroke against the canvas fabric of the couch, and came with his head thrown back. Cas embedded his fists in Dean’s hair and buried himself in his husband’s body and came too, mouthing at Dean’s shoulder until the skin messily broke. Dean groaned loud, long, ecstatic.

It turned out, an ache like that _could_ last two full days and into a weekend away from home. Could even prove a helpful artifact to cling to when a flying phobia refused to respond to any other therapy. Michael sat beside Dean on the flight, offered his hand to be squeezed bloodless as usual, and smirked when Dean refused the sedative.

Geronimo and Shiloh, my furreal goodbois.  
Art by [Kodgrad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kodgrad/pseuds/Kodgrad)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! New semester starts next month. It'll be back to infrequent chances to write for fun again, so a slowdown in output. But that's how it goes. I'm still writing. 
> 
> For those who saw my plea here for a "vote" on a short story contest, I've taken the plea and link down based on further dives into that contest. It's run by a quasi-publisher with a sketchy business model. So... yeah. Thanks for voting, those who did. Your support means the world to me. ❤💖❤  



	22. Thursday, August 19, 2021

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new training wing is opening, but Benny still doesn't know the plan behind it. Cas has his hands full between his best friend's doubts and his new assistant's training wheels. Jo spends day one of CharlotteCon with her best friend, a reminder that Dean both a delight to know and a royal pain in the ass. And driving all of it is an increasing ACRI focus on developing strategies to support alphas and Omegas through the roughest stages of all, adolescence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter needs a disclaimer so there's not a misunderstanding as to content. ***I am not leading in to pedophilia here.*** That's not what this is. I set my age of majority at 16 for this species, so canonically, in this AU, 16-year-olds are full adults. Younger than that, they're minors. That line isn't changing. But just as the previous storylines skew real life issues, intentionally making things uncomfortable re rape culture and orientation biases, in order to tell this story, we're getting uncomfortable in terms of age limits. Warning for mentions of dub-con contact between adults and minors, but there won't be any explicitly shown scenes of such. However, going forward, I anticipate showing some fully explicit scenes between 'consenting' minors as the story dictates the necessity - age ranges for that will probably be 14 and older.
> 
> That said, enjoy.

NOW:

There were streamers, for fuck’s sake, and confetti that Castiel expected to be scraping out of uncomfortable places for the rest of the day. But as grand openings go, everything went smoothly. The Pack gathered, cheered, celebrated, drank champagne, gave rousing, optimistic speeches, chatted with the press, smiled for photo ops, and wandered the airy, welcoming spaces of the new adolescent training wing.

Cas’ internal chronometer buzzed a constant irritation inside his head, jabbing the fact that he didn’t have time for this. But he stayed anyway, smiling even into his eyes. Charlie kept him in her sights, holding him to his commitment not to sneak out once his speech ended.

Charlie was right. Cas needed to be here – to see and be seen and revel in hope-fueled success with his Pack. Jody and Donna brought the entire dorm down, and the young boarders were fascinated by the labs and workspaces, the gym, the private practice rooms, the spacious classrooms, and the intimate one-on-one therapy rooms. The students scampered from room to room, shouting raucously to one another and showing each other what they’d found. It was mayhem, but Cas let them be. Enthusiasm was a good thing, and the students were close enough to the target audience that watching their excitement was a comforting reassurance that the design would hit its mark in a month when the first waves of younger students arrived.

From the lofty reception area where the opening ceremony took place, Cas watched with satisfied amusement as teenaged students made their way up a wide, spiraling staircase to the floors above, leaning over the railings at each level to shout down to the atrium below for their friends, cascading handfuls of confetti from the highest levels, and playing with the echo.

Benny appeared at Cas’ shoulder with two glasses of champagne, one of which he handed to Cas. “It’s probably better that Bobby isn’t here after all,” Benny observed. “This chaos would give him apoplectic fits. I’m surprised you’re okay with it, to tell the truth.”

“They’re just excited,” Cas replied. “They aren’t hurting anything. It’s a party, after all. Did you have some of the cake?”

“Cas, I can’t get a handle on how you think this is going to work,” Benny said instead of taking the small-talk route. “We went along, built the thing, got it all in motion because you promised you have the vision to back it up, but we’re weeks away from having students in these halls, and we have no curriculum or guiding principles. What exactly are we going to be training the students to do? Masturbation classes?”

Castiel sipped his champagne and turned away to stroll toward a side hallway where it was quieter. Benny followed. In the cool recess, out of the sunlight and away from the echoing cacophony, away from the prying notice of the press, Cas glanced into one of the administration offices before facing Benny again.

“The curriculum is coming, Benny. I need you to trust me. But rolling it out before Styne comes through for us on the legislation is suicide.”

Benny crowded in close and dropped his voice into an urgent register. “What is this curriculum, then, boss? You can’t even show me? Man, I should have been part of the drafting of this thing from the start. What are you and Dean up to?”

“It’s nothing nefarious, I promise,” Cas assured him. “Dean adapted your theories. You’re all over this curriculum. It’s your premise at the base, Benny. Swing by the house tonight and get Dean to walk you through it. I’d do it myself, but I’ll be in Dayton through the weekend.”

“Why the secrecy? If you’re implementing my work, then I should have a say in how we go about it. Cas, brother, if you’re waiting on Styne, then we’re talking about sex with minors.”

Cas pursed his lips then looked away and took a sip.

Benny huffed and copied him. “You’re such a prick,” he grumbled.

“You’ve known this about me for a very long time,” Cas reminded his friend.

“Alpha, we can’t…”

Cas really didn’t want to have this conversation here in plain view, but apparently, they were doing it anyway. Out in the foyer, Max grinned, shook hands, pointed out his favorite design aspects to anyone who would listen, and basked. The kid deserved to bask. This was his accomplishment. He’d risen to the challenge spectacularly. Even more than the building, Max had played a crucial role in developing the prototype curriculum that Cas was reticent to show even to Benny. Benny wasn’t going to like it. But if Cas could convince his friend that thirteen wasn’t too young for some preliminary Tertiary play, then there was hope for the wider Lupin community. Max had been adamant. And Max was the man Cas trusted to tell him the gritty truth. Who better to understand the coming-of-age challenges of Omega youth than an Omega whose youth had been a gauntlet of horrifying experience?

First, they had to help the Omegas. Only then could Castiel worry about alphas like himself, like Benny.

“We should have found more O/D’s by now, Benny,” he said, apropos of the argument Benny hadn’t voiced out loud but was screaming between them. “The training we’ve offered for years now is taking root out there. Society is shifting. We’ve reached critical mass with the young adult population. Our people have made the commitment, and the ACRI methods are the new norm for sixteen-and-overs. And yet, Michael is still our only O/D. Now, I can believe it’s an extremely rare designation. I’ve read the reports and all the statistics, the probabilities and genetic circumstances that would preclude Omega-Dominance from occurring naturally. It’s rare. But it’s not impossible. There should be more. More than just one. They’re still dying at Presentation, Ben, dying on the streets or in prison before we ever see them. We _have_ to develop schemas to carry them through to adulthood, and that means doing things the public isn’t going to like.”

“We’re _not_ going to fuck _children,_ Castiel!” Benny hissed furiously.

“No,” Cas soothed. “But we are going to teach them, and we’re going to encourage them to fuck each other. Under controlled, monitored circumstances. And we are going to develop techniques to validate their wolves’ designations pre-Keller test, so we can find the Dominants and ease them through. It’s all about young Doms right now.”

Benny frowned. “That’s creepy as hell, man. How are you going to keep them safe? How do we do this without looking like a voyeuristic peepshow for young twinks?”

Cas turned it around on him. “Why did you let me build it?” he asked pointedly. “What did you think we were going to be teaching them? Hygiene?”

Benny shrugged and downed the last of his champagne. “They’re teenaged wolves, Cas. You can’t teach too much hygiene.”

Cas laughed and chucked Benny on the shoulder. “Trust me, Ben. We built transparency and safeguards into the programs. I’ve got Jess heading up the legal team. I’ve got Max tearing every word of the policy manual to shreds. He’s ruthless. Nothing skeevy-seeming or even so much as hints at coercive or exploitive gets by his red pen. We’re teaching them everything about consent that no one ever taught you and me. There’s no mandate that any of these kids jump into beds they aren’t ready for. It’s not a boot camp. It’s a safe place for safe exploration of their bodies, their wolves, and their developing appetites. And yes, there will be a great deal of training directed at a wide array of masturbation techniques, with and without toys.”

“And when you spot an Omega whose behavior patterns show internal conflict?” Benny pressed.

“We provide them with extra support,” Cas told him vaguely.

“Extra support,” Benny repeated.

“No one dies on my watch, Benny. Not in my house. Not in my Pack.”

“You shouldn’t have cut me out of the planning,” Benny repeated with a glower.

“You knew what we were doing,” Cas said coldly, upping the metaphysical weight of his wolf. “And you knew you would be obligated to object if you were part of the drafting process.”

Benny huffed what could have been a chuckle or a scoff. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission?”

Cas laughed and touched the rim of his glass to his friend’s. “Always.”

***************

Castiel shed his suit jacket the moment he boarded the company jet, shucking out of it like a boxer dropping his robe and rolling his shoulders. Climbing aboard behind him, Mick sensed the Alpha’s confrontational headspace and paused in the entryway. Cas chucked his jacket across the back of a chair and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. He turned and fixed his assistant with an icy blue gaze.

“Talk.”

At Mick’s back, the door cinched shut with a tone of finality, and he visibly flinched. “Sir, I knew about the rumor, but I did a cursory sweep of the matter and disregarded it. It’s baseless. There’s nothing there. I calculated it would flare up and die back down on its own. Why waste time chasing trivial matters when there are real threats in the wings just waiting for a break in our defenses?”

Castiel listened with his eyes on his sleeves as he rolled each to his elbows, tucking the fabric tightly and flexing his forearms nonchalantly. He nodded once, signaling his understanding. “Mick, do you recall at any time while you and I were establishing the scope of your responsibilities to me and this institution, hearing me say the word _cursory?”_ His blue eyes lifted back to Mick’s while his chin stayed tucked, driving deep lines into his forehead.

Mick cleared his throat. “I can’t chase every rumor, Alpha. There are big fish in these waters, to put in sailor’s lingo for you. What you told me is that I’m responsible for protecting you from threats. Baseless rumors about you and some Omega in a place where half the staff has their dicks in their hands at a fucking staff meeting are not threats. Hell, most people who heard it were all for the idea that you might be on the prowl in the lunchroom there. Folks are hoping you’ll pick them next. Or am I missing something?”

“Have a seat, alpha,” Cas instructed. “Buckle up. Let me explain the definition of _a threat_ to you.” Cas followed his own instruction, taking the window seat facing Mick and leaving his blazer carefully laid across the back of the chair to his left. A sophisticated woman in her mid-thirties approached from the back of the aircraft.

“Whenever you’re comfortable, Alpha,” she addressed Castiel politely, smiling gently, “Captain says we’re clear to get underway. What may I bring you this evening? Are we doing dinner?”

“We’re ready, Jill, thank you. And just drinks. We’re dining in Ohio,” Cas replied, lowering his intensity to match the flight attendant’s polite charm. “I would like a Scotch if you would, please. That smoky one you served me last time was delightful. The Octomore? Mick? A drink?”

Mick snorted slightly and shrugged. “I don’t suppose you have Guinness?” He glanced up at the woman sheepishly, feeling out of place and outclassed.

“Of course, alpha,” she said smoothly. “Have a good flight, gentlemen.”

Once she was gone, Mick had nowhere to look but across at his employer and those icy eyes, stern and forbidding. He leaned in. “Sir, I understand the concept of threats. I know they can come from anywhere, and they don’t always mean the barrel of a gun. But that kind of rumor? Sir, it’s _whack-a-mole._ I could run myself ragged stomping them out and there will always be more. Meanwhile, the cults dig in under the armory and blow us all up. You’re sending me on a wild goose chase when my focus needs to be on threats that can hurt you. Are you really that concerned about what the minions think you do in your spare time? Alpha, they worship you. You have to know that.” Veins began to protrude at Mick’s temples as his intensity peaked.

“Calm yourself, alpha,” Cas soothed when Mick’s tone lifted toward shrill by the end. “I need you to understand this. Listen to me.” He took the tumbler Jill offered without really looking, pausing briefly to thank her as she set a dark, foamy pint at Mick’s elbow as well. “One, don’t ever use the word _minions_ again, not even in your own head. Two, rumors that involve Omega employees will always deserve your attention, even if you are pulled in eight directions at once already. Three, my reputation is not about me, Mick. It is about this institution and what it stands for. It is about the crusade we are on. If we allow a trace of sunlight between what I need people to believe about me and what others mean to paint me to be, we’ve lost the battle; we’ve lost the war. Threats are a constant reality, and they can sneak under the door while you’ve got your back to it staving off the battering rams. I need you thinking outside of that box. I need your eyes and your ears everywhere. Because we are at war, here, Mick. Do you understand?”

“But Sir, that rumor is harmless…”

Cas slapped a hand down hard on the armrest. “It is NOT harmless! A young professional’s reputation is at stake, a young professional who bet everything on the promise that we are different from what he learned to expect from the world. His trust in us hangs by a spider’s silk strand, Mick, and we have an obligation to protect him! No, I don’t give a fuck what people think I’m up to, not from a personal standpoint. Half of what they suspect I do in my private life likely barely scratches the surface of the truth. But when those suspicions draw an employee into a light that crosses the bounds between private play and institutional abuse, especially an _Omega_ employee, Mick, that is a _threat_ to all of us, in every sense of that word, and I expect you to _act, post haste._ Is that clear?”

The engines below them fired and rumbled the fuselage. The jet turned, sending a flash of setting sunlight sweeping across the cabin at sharp angles. Mick squinted as the streak crossed his eyeline. “I hear you, Alpha. It won’t happen again.”

Cas held his eye, let the words echo as the jet left the ground. He sipped his whiskey. Warm, peaty vapor coated his mouth and filled his sinuses with a smoky richness. He eventually closed his eyes to savor the sensation. It really was delightful. At length, Cas sat back into the plush luxury and relaxed his shoulders. “Mick,” he said from the cocoon of his captain’s chair, “If this is to work between us, you need to know who I am. I must know I can trust you and you me.”

“No offense, Alpha, but isn’t that something we should have addressed before you hired me?”

“No,” Castiel said bluntly.

Mick stuttered, mused, frowned, and then nodded and wiped the foam from his upper lip. “All right. What do you have for me that I don’t already know?”

Cas smirked slightly. “Let’s dispense with the idea that you’re a special ops-trained security guard. I know who you are. I know your past. In fact, I selected you for this role _because_ of your past.”

“Sir…”

“Relax, Mick. Let me explain. You and I share a philosophy, I believe. Do not mistake me. You bring to me a very specific skillset, and I need you to understand that it is that skillset I hired you to employ on my behalf, not the one you listed on your resumé. I expect you to protect me, my Pack, my associates, my facility, my interests, and my crusade, and I need you to do that in whatever way gets the job done.” Cas held his eye, sending more subtext than explicit communication. The men had no bond between them, but Cas could read the moment Mick caught on.

“Nothing can be allowed to impede my trajectory, alpha,” Cas continued at a low gravel-scratch, a voice too low for Jill to hear. Mick cut his eyes toward the rear of the plane anyway, astutely noting that the message Castiel imparted was one he would not appreciate spreading beyond one man’s ears. His face paled. “Whether that is a physical threat to my person or a rumor that threatens the promise I made to the Omegas I employ. It’s all the same thing. A threat is a threat is a threat. Do not allow _anything_ to harm me.”

“Yes, Alpha,” Mick told him, stout and confident in a way Cas had not yet seen from him before now. “I understand.” He rolled his shoulders as if the metaphorical unbinding felt physical.

“Good,” Cas set his tumbler on the surface beside him, underneath his shed blazer, leaned closer toward his employee with his elbows upon his thighs, hands closer together, and caught Mick up in a private bubble, big enough only for the two of them. He grew philosophical, a heavy weight across the span of his shoulders and a light of destiny in his eyes. Mick fell captivated by the sheer weight of the burden in the Alpha’s eyes. “You and I, Michael Frederick Davies, we are going to rip up the ending to this tragedy our species is caught up in. We are going to rewrite it. We are going to subvert the role of fate and imperative, leaving for our people nothing but freedom… and choice. I…” Cas flicked his eyes up from his clasped hands to Mick’s awed face. “I’m getting ahead of myself.” Cas grimaced slightly and then regrouped. “Let me tell you my story.” The air between them crackled with purpose. “Let me tell you everything.”

By the time the jet began its descent through the clouds, Mick was nodding. He’d heard enough to recognize the twin darknesses within them, wolf to wolf. His eyes shot across the cabin in thought, sharp and wary, a mirror to his racing mind as pins fell into place in his head. His pint sat half-empty, traces of foam drying on the interior surface. Castiel told him enough to communicate that Mick would never get away with hiding anything from his boss, and enough also to feel confident his best interest lay in not trying. Castiel took the shackles right off and tossed them casually out the window to disappear at twenty-thousand feet. Mick understood he would walk away from this jet with _carte blanche_ to do anything he needed to do in the interest of protecting his employer’s interests. That allowance, provided Mick’s efforts were successful, would never be questioned, as long as Mick kept the ultimate goals of Lupin welfare as his driving motivation, as long as he didn’t get caught. It was a heady conversation. Mick felt a little dizzy.

He’d missed the heyday of the IRA’s deepest engagements, but he had cut his teeth on generational outrage back home. The blaze of hatred against systemic inequity coursed through Mick’s veins with his lifeblood. It was the first language he’d learned to speak, taken in with his mother’s milk, and Mick had grown up feeling impotent to target his wrath upon the world with any potency. Castiel held his eye, solemn and stolid, unflinchingly pointing him toward a target.

“We understand each other, then,” Cas concluded, casting the darkness in his eyes back into whatever deep crevasse he stored it in and fastidiously rolling his sleeves back down. Outside, the blackness of the night obscured any view outside their cabin but an occasional sparkle of hamlets on the ground. Mick watched the Alpha button his cuffs, and he licked his lips.

“You’re not going to punish me, then?” he asked reluctantly, kicking himself for bringing it up. “I figured I was in for a right thrashing what with a cockup like that right out of the gate.”

Cas chuckled and reached for his suit jacket. “Do you need a strapping, Mick?”

“What? Me? No,” Mick was quick to respond. “Not usually the kind of thing folks get to decide for themselves, though, is it?” He eyed Castiel’s right hand disappearing into his coat sleeve.

Castiel’s eye twinkled. He slipped the jacket on, busying himself with settling it properly and adjusting everything, tugging his shirtsleeves down at the wrists. “Look,” he said. “Billie and I never needed that to reach an understanding. We tried it once with disastrous results. We never had a Claim-bond between us either. Wolves are not robots, Mick. There’s no magic formula to dictate what does and doesn’t establish a connection of trust between us. You are alpha. That means that our relationship is far more likely to be damaged if I use corporal punishment on you than if I don’t. It also means that the door is open to Dominance-Fucking, if that’s the most effective way for my wolf to explain its mind to yours. That door is wide open, alpha. But I intend to test the waters between us without relying on Claim-bonds to speak for me. If _talking_ works, that is what we will do. The moment I lose you, do not imagine for one moment that I will hesitate to put you on the ground. I have too much at stake to risk everything I’ve built. However, that said, you need to understand that the only time I ever punished your predecessor, it was for softballing her dissent. Mick, when you disagree with me – and you will – I expect you to square your shoulders and tell me so directly. Do not manipulate me. Do not ever lie to me. Do not placate me or soothe me or bullshit me. If you need to raise your voice to me, then seek a private audience, and do it. Get my attention if you must. You will never be punished for adamance if your goals are pure. We are a team, you and I. This olive branch I’m extending is yours to pick up. I offer you my trust. What you do with it is your call.”

Mick regarded the Alpha with a cocked head and a scratch at his chin. Castiel, in one plane trip, put him into an impossible position and then casually offered him no real choice at all. By sharing his own full and sordid life story – all the juicy bits, anyway – Mick hoped that had been all of them – Castiel confided enough to Mick that the only options going forward were to throw all in with the man and follow him till death do they part or have the most powerful wolf in any known lifetime breathing forever down his neck until Mick Davies disappeared in a fog of mystery some gray, misty night in some gray, musty city.

“Trust, is it?” Mick asked airily, hiding, he hoped, the quiver in his throat. He knew enough now to be a threat to Castiel. “No bonding. No compulsion? No straps?”

“Straps are ineffective on adult alphas,” Cas repeated. “And my arm gets all the exercise it needs at home, anyway.” The offhand way he said it somehow broke the tension between them, and Mick laughed.

The overhead intercom crackled to life with an announcement from the pilot that they were approaching the runway and a request to buckle in for landing. Cas adjusted his hips, his clothing, and his drink, slugging the remainder in a single shot and handing the empty to Jill when she appeared.

“Are you going to continue to pretend you’re English?” Cas asked as he reached across to collect Mick’s glass so Jill didn’t have to stretch.

Mick chuckled, caught somehow by surprise. “Americans hear an Irish accent, Alpha, and they think Leprechauns and Lucky Charms. They hear a Whitechapel accent, and they think dark, dank, fog-blanketed riverfront and Jack-the-Ripper. It’s not hard to reckon which persona folks’ll respond to the quickest, especially when time is of the essence. Persona is about more than appearance, I’m sure you agree.”

Cas laughed. “You and I, Mick, are going to get along fine. Forgive me for letting you flounder for a few months. I needed to see what your instincts looked like before I could trust you with more. I need you at my six, watching what I cannot see, and I can’t let anyone into that position who doesn’t have my absolute trust.” The ground rushed up to meet the jet outside the tiny starboard window at Cas’ right shoulder, rubber tires squealing briefly as the made contact and gripped. “What I want you working on tonight while I meet with Crowley is an emergency code list. Put together a code for every conceivable crisis you can imagine. I’ll memorize it on the way home, and we’ll add whatever I feel may be missing.”

“Assuming I miss anything, of course,” Mick pointed out.

Cas cocked an eyebrow. “You have not yet lived in my orbit long enough to have the full experience, alpha. Cockiness does not win you points.”

“Bullshit, Alpha,” Mick returned the volley. “Cockiness wins when everything else fails me. Always has. Tell you what, I’ll wager a month of doing Billie’s filing for her that I don’t miss anything you can think of before we touch back down in K.C. on Sunday.”

“You’re on,” Cas accepted readily. “And if you win, I will cover your Guinness for the next year.”

The jet pulled to a smooth stop outside a hangar that was flooded with light. One shiny, black Escalade waited on the tarmac for them. Standing calmly by the back door, Crowley himself waited with his hands folded before him, looking every bit the oily salesman he was. Mick studied him through the port and then caught Castiel’s eye. “I do love my Guinness, Alpha, but are you sure my time wouldn’t be better spent ferreting out that guy’s skeletons? There is no way he’s not a threat to you.”

“Leave Crowley to me tonight, Mick. I know his skeletons. And no, he’s not clean. You can get up to speed from Billie’s notes and then do your own legwork to verify. But not here. Not in his own back pocket. Assume his people are watching your every move. Assume you’ve been bugged from the moment you step off the plane.” Cas unbuckled his belt and pushed out of his seat. Mick followed.

“If he’s so skeevy, Sir, why employ him?”

“Friends close, enemies closer,” Cas replied. Jill handed him his briefcase at the top of the stairs and accepted a warm kiss to her cheek and a squeeze to her upper arm in thanks. Mick only nodded to her with a tight smile. Cas descended quickly, letting momentum carry him right to the car where he appeared to intend not to pause even if the door hadn’t opened just in time for him to slide in. But slide in, he did. And he didn’t miss the quickly stifled look of alarm on Crowley’s face that morphed rapidly into one of annoyance.

Crowley grumbled under his breath, “Let me get the door for you, Castiel,” in a sarcastic tone that dripped with irreverence.

“That would be ‘Alpha’ to you, Fergus,” Mick reproved on his way through to follow his boss.

Crowley lifted his head in distaste. “Ah, you’re the new page boy, are you? Nick, is it? How lovely to meet you. I’ve been needing my shoes shined.”

“Get in the damn car, Crowley, and let’s go,” Cas called to him. “I have things to do tonight and sitting on the tarmac isn’t one of them.”

“Of course, Alpha.” Crowley slid into the rear-facing seat opposite Cas, leaving the door for Mick to close. Which he did with a quick, sweeping look around first. “Dinner, first. I booked a private room at the Oakwood. It’s not Kansas City steaks, mind you, but it’s not exactly dogfood. The wine list is acceptable.” Crowley tapped the back of his seat, and the driver steered toward the airport exit.

Cas grunted as he extracted his tablet and booted it up. “Take us through a drive-thru, for all I care. We have far more critical things to discuss.”

“Now, Cas, I know your people in Lawrence have you seeing this thing as an emergency, but you’ll see. We have time. Rushing miracles gets you nothing but shitty miracles. I’m finessing things here. There are relationships to foster, and if we apply pressure at the wrong time, in the wrong way… well, it’s like forging a fine sword. It takes a master to craft a masterpiece. You don’t want a sword that fractures with the first blow, now do you?”

“My god, you’re a pretentious blowhard, aren’t you?” Mick observed. The Scot shot him a dismissive scowl and otherwise ignored him.

“Crowley,” Cas said without looking away from his tablet. “Let me be perfectly clear. You can produce for me precisely what you agreed to produce, or you can grow accustomed to mental and physical pain until you do. Everything is waiting on you, and we do not have time to wait. I have four separate, unrelated major projects hovering at completion, requiring nothing but a stable source of funding. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but funding them is your job, is it not?” He finally glanced up, and by the stricken look on Crowley’s face, the beta would rather he hadn’t.

Crowley, being the salesman he was, though, recuperated swiftly. “Let’s not exaggerate, Alpha,” he blustered. “Your projects can’t move forward until the legislation to support them moves forward. And be honest, at least two of those bills are dead before they ever hit the House floor.”

“You let me worry about the legislation,” Cas snapped. “You worry about the funds. Stop playing for positioning. You are precisely where I want you to be, and unless you quit playing two years into the future and handle where you are today, that’s all you’ll ever see. Am I clear?”

Crowley smirked. “Crystal, Sir. As always.”

But he’d scored a point. Castiel’s time as Director was up in less than two years and after that, as everyone knew, he would be moving into Crowley’s position, taking a deliberate, Washingtonian step downward to allow fresh faces to keep the enterprise forever alive and vibrant. Cas didn’t need Billie’s incessant whispering in his ear to know Crowley was planning his exit strategy and fostering good will with people who could ease his landing when he left. Crowley had less than two years left, and then Castiel had no grip on the man. It was a bluff, and they both knew it.

But while Crowley might be oily enough to slip out of many a hold, he was no Castiel. He watched Cas scowl at his tablet, his distaste for his present company leaking from his pores. Then Crowley turned his near simper toward Mick.

“Up on the scores from the home front lately?” he asked, appearing in all visible ways to be breaking the ice. “Cork or Dublin?” Crowley prompted with a perfect Irish accent.

Mick didn’t ruffle. He hadn’t expected to fool the canny Scotsman anyway. He smiled. “I’m a Man-City man, meself, actually,” he quipped jovially.

“Is that so?” Crowley had a trace of teasing in his tone.

“I prefer winners, I do,” Mick added with a wink.

“Interesting,” Crowley mused, studying him.

At the restaurant, Mick let Crowley walk ahead toward the front door, and he caught Castiel’s elbow, facing away from Crowley and whispering. “This bloke is eight layers deep, Alpha. Nothing he says is on the level. Also, he’s fucking _enamored_ with you. It’s creepy. Can’t take his eyes off you, but it’s not just fawning. It’s something else. Makes me skin crawl.”

Cas patted Mick’s arm and continued past him toward the door where Crowley waited, watching them with an amused expression. “Thank you, Mick. I appreciate your insight.”

Mick stood watching for a moment, letting Cas pull ahead of him before he sighed heavily and caught up. The steaks had better be damned good to be worth remaining in Crowley’s company. He diverted himself by inventing clever emergency code words in his head to add to his list and coming up with creative emergency scenarios in which to employ them.

A year’s supply of Guinness might make up for however many hours he had to spend in Crowley’s company.

Perhaps.

**************

Jo swatted Dean’s ass on her way into the seminar room, cheerful with the ebullience of their freshly concluded panel.

“Watch it, kid. Michael logs every tap, swat, stroke, and strap. I think he implanted sensors in my ass cheeks while I was sleeping to keep count. Whatever you touch, he doubles.” Dean let the door swing closed behind him, followed Jo to the end of the long room where stacks of chairs waited and began helping her set up. “Thought the civvies were supposed to manage setup and tear down now that we’re big-name celebrities,” he groused, grunting as he tugged a dolly full of chairs into motion.

“Do you ever stop bitching?” she teased with a wink and a harder slap to his rear. Dean dodged too late, laughing.

“Seriously,” he said. “Are we in the wrong room? Charlie usually has us situated before we show.”

“I don’t think so. Text her.” Jo pulled a few chairs free and set them up facing one end of the room before returning for more. Dean put his phone to his ear, conducted a swift talk with the harried coordinator and then pocketed the phone again. He lifted a stack of chairs free, following Jo’s lead on arranging them.

“She said half the volunteers are no-shows,” he told Jo as they passed each other. “There’s no one free. It’s just us. How’s that for an ego-buster? No matter how many times my face shows on TV, I’m still here, unstacking chairs.”

“You live a rough life, Winchester,” she told him with no trace of a smile.

“You got that right,” Dean agreed. “Wanna see what Michael did to my ass last night?”

Jo snorted but signaled he should drop trou and prove his boasting. She marveled at the coloring, snickering when a vicious thump to the deepest purple surprised him into tucking under and whipping his pants back up.

“I swear I can’t leave you alone for ten minutes.” Michael’s voice caught them both, and they turned as one to greet the Omega at the door.

“Michael! Just in time. Help us out,” Jo beseeched. “This seminar has seventy-five registered. That’s a lot of chairs. It starts at three.”

“Hey, man,” Dean added as Michael joined them. “Where’s your escort? You walking the halls alone? You know better than that.”

“Steve dropped me at the door after he checked inside and saw you mooning your best friend,” Michael told him, but Dean stopped him with a hand on his arm, turning Michael to face him.

“Say that again. Look me in the eyes and say that again.”

Michael halted on his way back for another stack of chairs and faced his mate. Jo watched surreptitiously without slowing. “He saw me to the end of the hallway and watched me from there, Dean. I signaled to him when I looked into the ballroom and found you. I wasn’t unescorted.”

“Then why did you say he dropped you at the door? I can feel when you’re lying, Omega.”

“It wasn’t a lie, Dean. It was a manner of speaking. He didn’t take his eyes off me until I waved him off because I found you.” Michael rolled past Dean and heaved a stack of chairs into his grip, stumbling a little.

Dean disagreed. “You knew it was a lie, or your psyche wouldn’t have signaled to me.”

Michael arranged chairs and then addressed the stack Jo brought while she went back for more. She chivvied Dean, “Walk and talk at the same time, Dean, or skip the talking and just walk. Get a move on.”

Dean growled at her but followed anyway.

Upon dropping his stack at the end of the row, he handed the top one to Michael but didn’t let go. Michael looked up sheepishly, anticipating a lecture. He cocked his head. “Dean, are you mad that he didn’t walk the length of an empty hall with me or that I didn’t explain the distance between him and me when I joined you?”

“Maybe I’m mad about the shitty confrontational lippiness,” Dean quipped. He let the chair go and pulled several off the top of the stack himself, skirting Michael to line them up on the floor.

“Seriously,” Michael complained. He set the chair down and crossed his arms. “What was going to happen to me between there and here?”

Dean pressed his lips into a tight line and closed the distance between them. “Nothing,” he admitted. “The escort is supposed to stay with you until he sees for himself that you’re in safe hands. I know that rule pisses you off, Michael, but you signed the contract and you promised me you’d abide by it. We had a deal, you and me. I’m not mad at you. But you’re feeling something – something from your Omega – and that tells me that you believe you broke our agreement. I kinda feel the same. You with me? We talked about this.”

“He watched me the whole way,” Michael repeated.

Dean nodded. “I know, man. But tell me what you feel right now.” Dean held his elbow and his eyes as Michael wrangled with his Secondary designation internally, their bonds flaring dramatically in the backwash. Michael lowered his eyes.

“Goddamn it,” he groused toward the floor when his Omega demanded redress. Dean patted his back and returned for more chairs, walking backward to keep an eye on his mate.

“Come on, Omega. Help us get the room in order and talk me through it.”

Michael ran a hand through his hair and trudged to follow. “This is ridiculous,” he complained. “It’s a nothing burger…”

“And yet?” Dean prodded.

“I’m unsettled and flailing,” Michael admitted. He took up the rear of the heavy dolly full of chairs that Dean heaved forward, pushing from behind to get it moving. Together they rolled it to the front and began another row. “My Omega needs a response,” he added. “I fucked up, and I feel like shit about it.”

“What kind of response do you need?” Dean asked after setting a chair in place and lining it up evenly with the others. “Dig deep and search it out. Can we talk you down? Is a confession enough?” He set a hand at Michael’s cheek and drew his eyes back to meet his own. Dean could feel Michael’s disquiet. But he was leading his mate to verbalizing what often went unsaid, a technique that had proven effective in settling Michael’s persistent lingering shame from his upbringing. He’d sloughed off so much of that damage, but Secondary punishments, especially for incidental peccadillos like this, irked him hard enough that Dean considered it a block.

“Yes?” Michael tried pathetically, shuffling his feet like a child.

Dean chuckled and went back to the chairs. Jo wordlessly dragged the empty dolly away and replaced it with a full one, and the setup continued.

“All right,” Dean said with his hands full, following Michael to the far end to begin a new row. “You confessed. Told me it was nothing. I agreed it’s nothing. If anything, the escort is the one with some explaining to do. You’re not in charge of commanding him into lockstep with you. He’s the alpha. So? Are we done with this?”

Michael avoided his eye, distracting himself with straightening the row. Dean put a hand at the back of his neck and squeezed. “Michael?”

Grudgingly, Michael straightened and squared up. “No,” he replied. “I need a correction, Dean. This feels terrible. It’s stuck in my throat, and it burns.”

Dean pulled him in by his grip and kissed his temple. “It’s okay, man. I’ve got you,” he whispered. “Don’t lie to me. You don’t have to do that. I’m on your side.”

“I know, Dean. I’m sorry.”

Dean didn’t torture him with a lecture. He leaned Michael over with his hands on a chair, reddened his backside with fifteen swift strokes of his own belt, and then kissed him thoroughly, smoothing Michael’s hair back into place. “Oh, and you’re grounded until the main panel tonight. Straight back up to our room and stay there.”

“Yes, alpha,” Michael answered, chagrined but calm.

“I’ll get your escort,” Jo offered. She stuck her head out of the room and disappeared briefly, returning with an older alpha of considerable weight. “This is Manuel. He’ll take you up, Michael.”

Dean stuck his hand out to shake Manuel’s hand. A hard squeeze and a red-eyed moment or two later, he let the man go. “And don’t wave him down the hall from the elevator either,” Dean cautioned. “Walk him to his room and watch him close the door behind him.”

“Of course, alpha. He’s safe with me.”

“Don’t worry, Michael,” Dean added with a kiss. “I’ll take care of your absence. It’s just one panel. Ellen can do it solo. I want you in the corner up there for twenty minutes, and after that, if you’re still unsettled, text me. I’ll come running. You got me?”

Michael nodded. He nuzzled his face close to Dean’s scent glands and then pulled away to follow the escort.

Once he was gone, Dean went back to work with Jo. She had a deliciously smug look on her face.

“What?” he asked, somewhat embarrassed.

“Michael’s good for you,” she told him. “And you’re good with him. It’s nice to see how much you’ve grown, that’s all. You’re almost like an alpha sometimes.” Jo found an unlocked closet in the back and rummaged through its contents until she found a couple of tall stools, mic stands, and a box with two mics and cords. Once setup was complete, they leaned into their stools at the front and rested.

“I hate having to do that to him,” Dean confessed. “He’s been looking forward to the Omega panel with Ellen for weeks. His Secondary sense of consequence, though, it’s tightly wound, Jo. Doesn’t matter what either of us feels is justice, it’s his Omega who sets the parameters. Going easy on him because neither of us thinks what he did was a big deal just kicks the can down the road. Then he turns into a brat, and let me tell you, Michael as a brat is not a pleasant experience. You think _I_ can be a childish asshole? He’s that in spades and whole buttload more.”

She snickered and patted his thigh. “That’s what I said, Winchester. You’re good for him.”

“So, here you two are. Oh, thank god!” Meg exclaimed as she walked in. “I thought we’d have to do chairs in this room too. On your feet, alphas. You’re switching rooms with Benny. Your seminar got a glut of last-minute registrations and this room isn’t big enough.”

Jo protested. “What? No. We just killed ourselves doing the setup in here. We _own_ this room, Meg. It’s on the schedule.”

“Besides,” added Dean. “Since when do more people sign up for alpha class than Dominant class? That’s never happened in the history of our cons.”

“Where’s Michael?” Meg ignored their protests. “Steve said he dropped him off with you.”

“Steve is a dick,” Dean told her as he slid off his stool and put the mic he’d been toying with back on its stand. “He didn’t drop Michael off; he ditched him. Set him up for a Secondary dilemma that ended up getting Michael grounded. He’s up in his room until tonight’s panel. You’re going to have to tell Ellen she’s on her own.”

“What? No. Me? Fuck you, Dean. You tell her. She can’t do a room of two-hundred Omegas alone. We need a substitute.”

“Balthazar?” Jo suggested.

Meg rolled her eyes. “No way. That would be a disaster. The guy does panels like he’s on speed. Besides, he’s in one-on-ones all afternoon.”

“What about Adam?” Dean ushered Jo out of the room to follow Meg’s lead down the hall, trailing after the women. “He’s good in panels.”

“He’s modelling with Sam,” Meg told him.

“You do it, Meg,” Jo said assertively. “You and Ellen have great chemistry.”

“I’m not Omega,” Meg disagreed. They rounded the corner and found the wide hallway a turbulent mass of confusion as alphas whose seminar rooms were being switched around argued and fretted and shouted over one another. “Oh, good grief!”

“You don’t have to be Omega to assist in an Omega seminar, Meg,” Dean told her with a decisive finality. “I’ve seconded in that panel a whole bunch of times. You know the subject matter. You’re good with people…when you’re drunk,” he teased. “Step up for us, sweetheart. It’s a piece of cake for the best nurse the ACRI has ever had.” He winked. Meg rolled her eyes.

They both flinched and cringed when a fearsome shrill whistle sounded without warning from beside them. Jo’s fingers pulled out of her mouth as every eye turned toward her.

“Listen up!” she bellowed. “Seminar rooms are being switched to accommodate everyone. There’s no need to get your panties in a wad about it. I don’t care what your printed schedules say. Give us a few minutes to finalize the new assignments, and it’ll be on the convention web pages and posted on the main boards. Meanwhile, chill the fuck out, folks. The world is not ending. And clear the damn corridor before the fire marshal throws us all out on our asses! Thank you!”

Dean laughed. “I think you went into the wrong line of work, Harvelle. You should be in public relations with that smooth, calming tone of yours.”

She grinned at him, and he grinned back. “Alphas and Dominants, Dean, they don’t take direction well. Have to use blunt-force trauma to the brain.” The mêlée around them continued unabated, but Jo let them all fester. They weren’t her problem yet. “Where are we, Meg? And I swear if the room isn’t prepped, we’re all just going to squat on the floor like a big drumming circle.”

Meg scoffed and pointed them toward the end of the opposite hall. “You’re in the Mecklenburg room now. And finish up on time, because we’ve got to open that room back up into the main ballroom for tonight. Go check it out and make sure it’s ready. The support staff here is a disaster. Don’t talk to Charlie. She’s already having kittens about the volunteer coordination falling apart. If one more thing goes wrong, she’ll hide in the bar until the convention ends.”

Dean sobered. “I hear you, beta. You and me, okay? We’ve got this. Call me for anything Charlie doesn’t need on her plate. You hear me? I’m your coordinator now, Meg. We can do this. We need to pull Charlie through. We’ve seen worse. It’s a piece of cake, right?”

“Thanks, Dean,” Meg said with a somber expression. “I didn’t want to worry anyone, but I was picturing this thing turning into a catastrophe. We need the volunteers.”

“No, we don’t,” Jo asserted. “Let me do this next panel with Dean, and then the three of us will grab Benny, sit down and hash it out, redistribute whatever the volunteers were meant to be doing. We’ll put a plan together and present it to Charlie fully vetted. Hang in there, Meg. Get Benny involved. Fill in for Michael with Ellen, and then we’ll all meet after.”

Meg blew out a harried breath, looked around at the milling, grouchy alphas. “Okay. Okay. Shit timing to put our O/D on lockdown, by the way. But, okay. One panel at a time. You know where you’re going?”

“Yep,” Dean replied. “See you in a bit. Get these folks situated. Send them down to us, and we’ll go from there.”

“Right. Thanks, Dean.”

One look into the new room, and Jo’s heart sank. It was a massive rectangular space with a row of dollies at the back – dollies filled with stacked chairs. She looked over her shoulder at Dean and grimaced. “I’m not doing it again, Dean.”

He nodded. “Leave it to me,” he told her. “Follow my lead.” He moved into the room where a low dais marked the front end. It was already outfitted with mics and high stools, the same style they’d found in the Graves’ room on the other end of the building. Dean grabbed one mic, took the stool on the left, his usual, and he smirked. He flipped his mic on and tapped it. Solid pop and no reverb. At least Charlie had checked the audio. That kid was a godsend.

Jo raised her brows at him but shrugged and followed him up. They had twenty minutes to spare, and Dean didn’t seem put out about the empty room. Jo took a deep breath. Trusting Dean to handle a mishap always went one of two ways: into big trouble or into a perfect solution. Jo felt willing to gamble on either outcome. Hanging with Dean was fun.

“Talk to me, Joanna Beth,” he opened into the short breather he’d found for them, letting his mic hang loose at his lap. “What’s going on with you? How’s Jack? How’s things at home?”

She’d been expecting the question for some time. Dean was worried about her through their upcoming transition at work, and he was worried she would show up to work pregnant following her Rut cycle one day, despite his utter lack of business worrying about any such thing.

“I’m not pregnant, boss. You don’t have to worry about me taking maternity leave while we’re transitioning. I know how big a serving I’m taking on. I’m not going to let your precious department drop.”

“Oh, kiddo, I didn’t mean it like that. Come on. You know better than that. I’m the last person to judge you on putting your personal life as a priority. I bailed entirely for six weeks, remember? Relax and talk to me. This is me.”

Jo side-eyed him and frowned. “What are you asking then?”

“You got a big change coming up. It’s scary. God, Jo, I know how scary. The whole national teaching crew looking to you for all the answers, blaming you when shit hits the fan, looking to you for direction in tone and cultural guidance. All the regulations you have to have at your fingertips now, all the curriculum reviews? All the teacher evals? This is big, Jo. You ready?”

She giggled, slightly hysterical. “Is anyone ever ready?” Her belly swooped and her feet broke out in a cold sweat. “But I can’t swim if I don’t jump into the deep end. Besides, you haven’t done a teacher eval in years, you prick.”

“You know I’m right down the hall if you need me.”

“I know.” Jo shot him a look, one he knew from childhood, an iconic Joanna Beth look that she reserved just for him. _Here goes nothing,_ it said. _Catch me if I fall, yeah?_

“And, anyway, fuck stress and workload, kid,” he added. “You go ahead and get yourself knocked up whenever the hell you feel like. The training department will adjust. That’s between you and Jack.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Jo studied the trace of old duct tape marking mic stand locations on the dais. “Jack said he doesn’t feel old enough himself. Said he doesn’t feel like enough of an adult to raise pups. But really? He’s afraid, Dean. He didn’t have a dad, growing up. He thinks that without a model, he’ll be helpless.”

“Ouch,” Dean replied helpfully. “Yeah, Michael’s tangled up in daddy issues too.” He spoke quietly, all trace of brat and teasing and playfulness disappeared from his tone. “Maybe our next big research push needs to be about paternal influence on maturing pups. You think? Too many of us grow up shaky on the father front. Like you,” he said softly. “And Cas. Even April’s dad messed her up, and he tried hard to get it right.”

“My dad was doing a brilliant job of it…” Jo paused, the usual gut-kick hitting just as painfully as always when she remembered her father. “…until he died.”

“Yeah.” Dean remembered that day as clearly as Jo did, and that was a comfort as she looked across and met her best friend’s eyes. He huffed a humorless laugh. “Mine did great too until we lost Mom. We’re too delicate, emotionally, Jo. Every damn one of us sits right on the cusp of falling apart at the drop of the hat. I can’t say I blame Jack for being cautious. Nothing wrong with letting your Mating mature for a few years before you take that step. I mean, Cas and me, ours matured without us even knowing we were in a relationship at all, so once we married, it was already past time to start popping out pups.”

Jo laughed. “I’m not even going to justify that ridiculous statement,” she told him. “We’ve been Mated for four years now. I think it’s matured all it needs to. But Jack… I will say this: you need to keep your opinions and your worries to yourself around Jack. You hear me, Winchester? Don’t you go needling at him to change his mind. Don’t go inviting us to babysit so we can prove to him he’s great with kids.”

Dean adopted an expression so innocent, Jo burst into laughter and shoved him clean off his chair.

“Excuse me,” said a young alpha from the open doorway. “Is this the alpha seminar?”

“Yup,” Dean replied as he set his stool upright and tucked his chuckling back under. “Come on in. You’re early, but you’re in the right place.”

“Uh,” the guy stepped in and looked around. “Kind of bare, isn’t it?”

Dean slapped on a grin and summoned him closer. “Glad you brought it up. How would you like to participate in a research project our head researcher in behavioral science put together? It’s a practical social study.” Dean turned his back on the man briefly and winked at Jo. She schooled her face to interested, showing no tells that Dean was playing the guy.

“Um, what would I have to do? Is it involved?”

“Nah, man, it’s just a quick experiment in Secondary behavior patterns. It’ll all make sense in the seminar. But I need you in on it from the outset. You game?” Dean guided him in. “We’ve got a reward for you if you say yes. And it’s completely painless.”

As they spoke, another alpha appeared uncertainly in the doorway. She glanced around, nearly determined she was in the wrong place, but then spotted Dean and stepped anxiously forward.

“Even better,” Dean said encouragingly. “This experiment really needs two. Come on in. I was just telling…”

“Jackson,” said the first alpha.

“Jackson,” Dean repeated. “And your name?” he prompted with his hand extended.

She took it, falling more confidently into her alpha at his touch.

“Molly.”

“Okay,” Dean continued. “Jackson, Molly. Molly, Jackson. You two are a team. Here’s the deal. We need to get the room set up for the seminar that starts in a few minutes. You two are our coordinators.” Dean held up a finger in front of himself to draw their attention. Jo turned her back to hide her snicker. “IF…you succeed, we’ll give you both a free pass to any event you choose this weekend or free admission to next year’s convention.”

“I’m in,” Molly said. She dropped her purse behind the dais and began rolling up her sleeves as Jackson headed toward the back where the chairs were stored.

“Hold up, hold up,” Dean called. “There are four rules. You listening?”

They both paused and returned slowly to stand side by side in front of him, listening but wary.

“You’re coordinators, not workers. Here are the rules. Rule one: you cannot raise your voices. One shout, and it’s over.”

The two alphas glanced at each other but said nothing. Dean took that as agreement, and he went on, making it up as he went along.

“Rule two, you can help a little, but you can’t just do the work yourselves. You’re coordinators. You need to guide the other attendees to set up straight, even rows with an aisle down the middle, all under your direction. Rule three, you cannot simply dole out chairs to people as they arrive and have them place their own and then sit in it. This is a work project and an experiment in cooperative effort. The first alphas to arrive, after you two, are your worker bees, and they need to consider themselves conscripted until the whole room is set up. That means no setting out two chairs and then parking it. They gotta keep going until the job is through. New people who arrive should be considered extra hands. Get people involved. But don’t tell them it’s an experiment. Don’t tell them about the prize. That’s for you two only.”

“And rule four,” Jo broke in. “You need to succeed in convincing at least twelve alphas to participate fully – twelve alphas neither of you know. No texting your friends or Pack to come help.”

At the doorway, two more alphas poked their heads in.

“You’re on,” Dean told them, pointing them toward the door. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Jo watched as Molly and Jackson considered the reward versus the headache, determine it was worth a try, at least, and put their heads together briefly to plan an attack. Nodding, Jackson headed toward the back, and Molly toward the main door, plastering a big smile on her face to greet the newcomers.

Dean backed away silently, and Jo started up the video recorder on her phone, narrating softly into it. Dean’s plan might not be an officially sanctioned research study, but the outcome would be fascinating anyway, and she knew Kevin would slap them both if they didn’t record it. As he remounted the dais to join her, Dean smirked smugly.

She shoved him, and he cackled.

“Shh!” she admonished. “What is it with you? Why do people always do what you want them to do? They wouldn’t have done it for me.”

“It’s because of my perky nipples,” he assured her. “And ‘Shhh’ yourself, Harvelle.”

Jo recorded the next fifteen minutes on her phone, and honestly? It was a wonder they’d never thought to run this experiment before now. It was a fiasco. And hysterical. And inevitable. And sad.

Molly stood at the door, greeting newcomers and explaining they needed to help with the seating. Jackson started at the back, directing the first arrivals and starting the project moving forward. Right off the bat, three alphas entering together blew Molly off, wandered around for a minute before deciding that standing was uncomfortable and heading back to collect chairs for themselves. Jackson attempted to collect them, but none of them paid him any mind. They ignored the dolly he was heaving forward, chose chairs from a different stack, carried them to the front, set them down and sat, chatting among themselves. Jackson attempted once more to enlist them, but the oldest told him to go fuck himself. Meanwhile, more alphas arrived. Molly did her best. She was charismatic and earnest enough to cajole several into helping, but Jackson sabotaged her efforts. He was gruff and demanding enough that even the most affable of the volunteers soon flipped him off and settled into empty chairs near the front. Several of the enlisted volunteers got into a shouting match over the task, nearly coming to blows. Molly abandoned the door, pulled a laden dolly to the front, and adopted a drill sergeant’s tone, brusque enough that the alpha-Subs in the crowd responded, but quiet enough that she couldn’t be called down for rule number one’s volume stricture.

Jo laughed. “I didn’t consider she might flip Tertiary and try to speak to their wolves,” she laughed. “That might actually work.” For a few rows, Mollie had a routine working. Jackson stepped into the role of heavy-lifting support, delivering the full carts and rolling away the empties. He was an alpha-Sub, obviously. But after about three rows, with no messaging at the doorway to conscript new workers and arguments breaking out all over the room, those putting in the work realized they were going it alone as the cherry spots near the front filled up with newbies who hadn’t lifted a finger. In droves, they abandoned Molly before all the best seats were taken.

A broken line of casual observers took up spots at the side walls, imperiously waiting for new chairs to be delivered upon which they could park their alpha asses and ignoring all summons from the two coordinators. Insults began to fly across the room.

Jo tried to hide her giggles, but she couldn’t. She pressed her face into Dean’s shoulder to share her glee with him. Dean gloated, steadying her hand on the phone. If the shouting led to fighting, he would intervene, but as no fists had flown yet, he found the unraveling of their efforts amusing. Dean felt confident he could repair the emotional ruffles once the seminar was underway. This? This was funny as hell. Alphas, the top of the hierarchical food chain, couldn’t cooperate long enough to organize chairs.

What had started as tidy, well-spaced rows with an aisle down the middle, devolved by row six into a free-for-all, especially once one Deep Alpha-Profound Dominant snatched a chair out of Molly’s grip and plunked it right square in the middle of the aisle at the very front. He fell into it with his knees and elbows spread wide and a self-important look on his face, glaring up at Dean and Jo. After that, all bets were off. Jackson dropped the handle of the dolly he was lugging right where he stood, snatched a chair, carried it to the end of the last unfinished row, placed it just so, and sat down. Mollie blew a frustrated breath up to ruffle her bangs, and then followed suit, settling right beside him. They shared a defeated look and then occupied themselves on their respective phones, disappearing into the crowd, and pretending they hadn’t just been ordering strangers around in a room so stacked with testosterone that fights were liable to break out without a word spoken.

Once the delivery process halted, those standing along the sides, priding themselves on forbearance and patience, seemed baffled. Looks passed between them. More and more newcomers read the room upon entering and filled in the closing space toward the back with chairs pulled off stacks. And as the front and middle spaces filled, those who’d chosen to wait peeled off the side walls and took care of themselves. Dominants, Neutrals, and Submissives had casually striated themselves before Dean and Jo’s eyes. Kevin was going to eat it up.

Jo sighed and cut her recording, pocketing her phone. “At least no one came to blows,” she said with a grin. “Alphas, man. We’re not great at taking direction.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dean disagreed. “The Subs had this project whipped until your Neutrals fucked it up.”

”My Neutrals? It’s the fucking Doms who fucked it up. The Neutrals at least stayed out of the way.”

“Staying out of the way wasn’t getting the job done,” Dean returned. He hopped down off the dais and stalked to the end of what had originally been the front row but was now buried behind newly placed pseudo-rows crammed in right up to the edge of the stage. Dean arranged himself even with that row and pointed down its length. He raised his voice to carry. “Fire marshal rules, alphas! First row starts here. If you’re in front of my arm, grab your seat and hoof it to the back. No complaining. There’s room for everyone, and you’re all gonna get your money’s worth. Gotta have safe egress, and that means sixteen feet minimum for the front aisle.” It took them a moment, a pause of proverbial chicken as they waited to see if he was serious, but when he didn’t back down, they obeyed. Dean sent a wink to Jo and then repeated the drill to enforce his preferred aisle down the middle. The middle bit wasn’t part of the fire code, but Dean liked it when alphas obeyed him. He chalked it up to the _Deep_ in his ‘Deep alpha’ designation and years of teaching pretentious assholes who needed to be knocked down a peg.

Dean squared off in front of the big guy. There was no way this man wasn’t a Pack Alpha. But Dean needed only one whiff of his offensive scent to measure his Secondary. And Dean had him by a trace.

“I hate to have to do this, Sir,” Dean told him politely, hating it not at all. “But we need our middle aisle.”

He said no more but stood square and implacable with his hand out like a theater usher directing patrons, pointing toward the back. The rest of the alphas who had oozed into the empty middle space to gain themselves closer spots poised but waited. It was a standoff. Pack Alphas don’t like being told what to do, and Dean’s brat forbade him from offering the man a way to save face. He blinked and nodded toward the back. From somewhere in the back, someone shouted, “Dude, move your ass! We all paid for a seminar same as you! You’re wasting everyone’s time!” Dean put a calming hand up in that direction, and that was enough to tip the balance toward good will. With a grunt and a sigh, the Pack Alpha stood up and made a massive production about hoisting his chair. Everyone else in the aisle followed suit. Dean returned to the dais, his ballroom messy, but functional, and his patrons compliant.

The Pack Alpha ambled three rows back and then dropped his chair next to the innermost left-standing chair and sat down with a look of challenge on his face, effectively redefining the inside edge. Dean let him have his half-victory and the rest of the middle-occupiers scrambled like competitors in musical chairs to align themselves with him. He winked again at his colleague as he remounted the stage.

“You’re a piece of work, Dean,” she told him without her microphone.

“It’s Michael’s influence,” he boasted.

“The hell. You’ve been like this your whole life.”

“You got me,” he teased back before tapping his mic and shushing the crowd. He welcomed them formally, clarified the name of the seminar, repeated that rooms had been shuffled, and waited a moment while a few confused-looking Dominants checked their printed schedules.

“Let me repeat,” he repeated, “if you’re registered for _’Straps, Sticks, and Dicks,’_ you’re in the wrong room. Head down the hall, around the corner, and ALLLLLLL the way to the other end of the building to the Graves’ room where Benny will chastise you for showing up late.”

Jo elbowed him in the belly. “That is NOT what it’s called, Dean. Don’t be an asshole.” She turned to the crowd. “But seriously, if you’re looking for the Dominant class, this isn’t it, no matter what your schedule says. Out with you. Don’t mind Dean. It could happen to anyone. I swear we won’t all watch you leave.”

Shuffling followed. Several people made their way out amid snickers and mumbled repeats of the word ‘dicks.’

“All right,” Dean brought quiet to the room again. “For those of you who were here early enough to watch the chaos with the seating, answer me this: Why was it so hard to get any organization going with the set up?”

“Because we’re not paid to work here!” someone shouted.

“Nope. Wrong,” Dean replied. “In this same scenario, Omegas form a fireman’s chain and get the job done in half the time and with no shouting. And they manage straight rows, too.” Dean ignored Jo beside him with her judgy-eyes calling him for making shit up. They both knew it was true, or close enough to true.

“Because we’re leaders, not followers,” someone else stated to universal agreement.

“Okay,” Dean agreed. “Okay. But here’s the thing. Sometimes life gives you lemons, man. Sometimes there aren’t any followers to order around. The world is changing, alpha. It changed the minute we left the wilderness. You may be top dog in your home pack, but no corporation is holding the top spots just for alphas anymore. You got no guarantee of being anyone’s Top at work. Sometimes it’s critical that a roomful of alphas can set aside their instincts and work together. This here with the chairs, that’s low stakes. But out there? Alphas who can’t assimilate into work groups or cooperative bodies lose their chance to advance, maybe lose their jobs. Alphas who can’t hold down a job because they can’t work in a group are never going to be anyone’s Pack leader. This is real-world stuff with grave consequences. There are alpha gangs roaming the streets looking for violence. We all know it. We’ve all felt that call, let’s not lie to ourselves. Why does that still happen? Why do otherwise civilized alphas give in to that call? Because, one, we aren’t feeding our alphas enough authority at home, and two, we aren’t teaching our alphas how to join a non-authoritative group at work. We can’t do one without the other, and we can’t succeed as a designation without both. We have to look around us and let go of the idea that alphas are the be-all and end-all of the food chain. We are who we are, and we have a role to play, but as you just saw, it doesn’t matter how Deep we might be, without the other designations, we can’t get shit done for ourselves.” Dean paused and let that settle. Then he looked around and said, “So let’s talk about how to mesh who we are with what modern society needs us to be. We can be both, folks. This here’s Jo. She’s going to tell us how. Then we’ll take questions and talk about it.”

Jo stepped up to the mic. She thanked him, throwing him a look that called him on his bullshit, but what he returned, a bracing look full of pride and confidence directed at her, speaking right to her alpha and her wolf in a language only Dean could speak, made her blush. She basked in it for a moment, holding his gaze, questioning that he meant it, and he grinned, nodded, winked, and gestured toward the microphone. The floor is yours, his look said, and you’ve got this.

This was why she loved him so fiercely even though he could be the biggest prick in her life. No one, not even Jack, made her feel so seen and so valued and so trusted. She put a hand to his upper arm and squeezed before facing the crowd, primed for her.

Yeah, she thought, I’ve got this.

***************

Late that night, after the final raucous drum-thumping panel and a catered dinner in a smaller ballroom for just the staff, the staff leaders joined North Carolina’s Pack Alphas for a round table discussion. Castiel needed answers to some pressing questions, and they’d learned through trial and error that speaking to local leaders was the best way to get them.

The Scotch and merlot flowed steadily, and the Alphas knew each other well enough to speak freely. Benny presided. Affable and laidback, Benny ruffled no one’s feathers. They let the alcohol lead them into conversation more relaxed than they might have earlier in the day.

“The youth? Fuck, yes, we need help there, fellas…sorry, ma’am, no offense.”

Jo shrugged it off and held her tumbler for a waiter to refresh with a new glass. The Alpha continued.

“We’ve been waiting for guidance from you people for years,” he pointed out. “Word is you’re starting up a training program for younger teens, but not a one of us can find any guidelines on yours or anyone else’s website. Myself, I have four kids in my Pack past Presentation but short of sixteen. What the hell am I supposed to offer them? Two of ‘em are Omega. Heats every quarter. Screaming matches in the hallways with anyone who looks at them crossways. I can only spank them so many times before it stops helping at all. I can’t tie them to the house, and who knows what they’re up to out in public. Two years ago we had two pregnancies, a fourteen-year-old and one fifteen.”

Another Alpha leaned forward and swirled her wine in her glass, watching the dark liquid run smoothly down the inside surface. “We’ve had pregnancies too,” she admitted. “And the last Septennial burned us bad. Look, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve got feelers out for mates for my Pack’s seven Omega youth. These kids hardly know what their favorite TV show is, and I’m trying to Mate them off. But I can’t let them founder like they are. Someone’s got to look after them, and those Heats… I know the legal age is sixteen, but… Someone’s got to help them.”

A third Alpha leaned in, taking the bit. “I get what you folks are doing, and like every Alpha in this room, I’m grateful. North Carolina is down to less than a sixth of the young Omega deaths we had a generation ago. That’s big, folks. We all know it. But those Omegas who survive, well, no one quite knows how to support them right. For one thing, there’s the Heats. If you haven’t lived in a household with a screaming fifteen-year-old in Heat and no way to alleviate it, then you’ve got no call to judge those of us who set up an intermediary. Fifteen is close enough to sixteen when that kind of pain is going down. And for another thing, I don’t understand the cultural prohibition against DNA-testing of pups for their Secondary designation. Why the fuck are we still letting kids be taken by surprise when the technology exists to warn them what’s coming?”

Benny hemmed a little, shaking his head, and then he engaged. “Look, Alphas, the Secondary DNA-testing isn’t cheap, and that, by itself, privileges wealthier families. But socially, the question is even more dire. If we make it the norm to prepare pups through childhood for what’s in store for them after, we’re practically guaranteeing a striated social experience on the play-yard and in the classroom, everywhere. Once it gets out that a pup is genetically an alpha, its peers are going to react to that. Find out it’s an Omega, and the social repercussions are even worse. We can’t condone early testing, not for any reason. I’m sorry, but just like their sexual orientations, some things are just best left to unveil on their own.”

“Right,” Michael agreed from Dean’s left. “But the question of adolescent support is one you deserve answers to. We’re building guidebooks right now, Alphas. That’s why we called this meeting. We need to hear from all of you. What do you need most? And what are your opinions? What’s worked for you? What hasn’t?”

Michael felt Dean’s pride stroke his Mating-bonds and all along his spine, but Dean didn’t say a word. He let Michael’s voice speak for itself.

“What hasn’t?” responded the highest-rated Alpha in North Carolina, a woman with bearing and gravitas coming out her pores. “The laws governing Lupin adolescence, that’s what hasn’t. It’s the Ozzies who take it on the chin. They’re still swimming in childhood submissiveness, but now they’ve got a wolf whining in the corner begging them to behave and please the bigger dogs in the Pack. You tell a kid like that the law forbids them from having sex, and they cross their legs and hope for the best. Beta-Subs, alpha-Subs, they don’t look to the Pack for approval. They go find themselves a young buck Dom to please, shove their knickers to the floor and go for it. But the Ozzies…It’s a fucked-up world when the pup most in danger of dying in adolescence is the one least likely to do the one thing that’ll save him.”

“It’s no secret,” said a quiet voice at the end who had been silent up to now. “That no one in this room lets their Ozzies suffer that way.”

“Chase!” three of the Alphas chastised at once. Chase glanced around and then shrugged. “It’s true.”

“Nothing anyone says here tonight is leaving this room,” Benny told them. “…Not with quotes on it.”

Chase sat forward. His voice rose in confidence. “I can tell what we do in my Pack.” Benny nodded for him to continue, so he did. “Kids get close to Presentation, and we homeschool them from that point on, all the way through high school. We give them ample opportunities to socialize, keep contact with the outside world, but I’m not putting fresh meat on the market for the alpha gangs on the street corner to feast off. And I’m not adding any alpha teenagers to society’s woes either. No, they do their maturing at home, no matter how they Present.”

“What about the betas?” Jo asked. “They have to stay home too?”

“I’ve allowed a couple of betas out for special school programs, but I figure, fair’s fair, and if the Omegas are stuck with homeschooling, then they all are.”

Dean shared a look with Benny. That kind of approach wasn’t good for kids, socially, and it wasn’t feasible for nuclear families. It wasn’t a new tactic. But Chase wasn’t finished, and his next point wasn’t new either.

“Kids grow up,” he pointed out. “And they mature at their own pace. We keep an eye on them. Once they reach a certain level of…curiosity, shall we say, we put our heads together and name a Pack mentor for them.”

“Yes, but, Alpha,” said a woman at the other end with a tone of having been over this before. “You’ve got the numbers to pull that off. My Pack is small, and most of us share a bloodline. No Omega wants her first time to be with her Uncle Ted.”

“So you _hire_ someone, Maribel, Jesus!”

“All right, folks, settle,” Benny said in the tone that brooked no argument. It worked despite the room’s cumulative designations. “What age, roughly, do you find works best for that kind of interception?”

“Fifteen, mostly,” replied a husky man near the middle. Michael, taking notes, nodded to himself and took a swig from his glass. “But even before that, I think we all look the other way when the pups find a friend or two to invite over for slumber parties. That kind of exploration is natural and healthy, no matter what the law says.”

“Let me turn it around,” Chase put in, crossing his arms in front of him on the table. “Each of you. How old were you the first time you had sex? Full-on, cherry-popped, penetrative sex?”

Jo scoffed and looked at Dean, who shrugged. “I was twelve,” he admitted.

“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “Twelve.”

Down between their thighs, Dean fist-bumped his mate, more about their similarity than because of any pride at early prowess.

“I was sixteen,” Jo told the room.

Uriel answered, “I was nineteen, but my twin brother is Omega, and he was thirteen. Your point is a good one. Omegas aren’t beta and they aren’t alpha. But a pup is still a pup. I’d like to see us support them as kids as long as we can. Just because their bodies are demanding sex doesn’t mean their minds are ready.”

“Then what do you propose?” asked two Alphas at once.

Benny nodded. “Uriel’s right. It’s a rough time for all wolves, even the betas. But our primary focus must be on saving lives first, and on raising healthy adults second. And while I don’t believe _any_ pup is ready for sex at twelve years old,” he glanced at Dean and Michael. “I can’t deny that the earlier a wolf experiences their first time, the more likely they are to survive to achieve full stability later. And let’s not forget, Omesol poisoning that kills Omegas isn’t a Tertiary issue. An Ozzie’s wolf is what begs them to be compliant to the law and their Pack Alpha’s rules, but it’s not the wolf that kills them when they overdose on Omesol.”

“Where are the alpha sperm repositories we keep hearing about?” another Alpha demanded. “If we can get injectable spunk to cool our kids off when their Heat hits hard, most of us would be happy to make them wait until they’re older.”

“You can do that yourself, Sharif,” another on the panel told him caustically. The air took on a frisson of ozone as two adversaries sparked up in tension. Benny waited calmly for them to rein themselves in. “I’m just pointing out,” the Alpha went on coolly. “You can freeze it. Create your own cache. That’s what we do. Our Omegas go on birth control soon as they have their first Heat, and after that, we give them injectable, sterilized semen from a supply every alpha in the Pack contributes to.”

“Yes,” said the matriarch. “But alpha semen without the power-exchange dynamic and the act of penetrative sex only works about a quarter of the time. I mean, do it, by all means, but in the hardest fifteen-year-old Heats, I think any one of us would act to save our pups’ lives, even if it means mounting our own offspring. I know I have. More than once.”

“But you have more pups than god, Cecelia. You probably lost track of which ones are yours.”

The room laughed and the tension broke.

As Michael and Dean returned tired to their room that night, they both had a great deal on their minds.

“Dean…”

“I know, Michael. I know. Ace and Kat both. Maybe Emma. The only one we know for sure is Jimmy, and his being an alpha doesn’t protect him. Alphas have their own risks. We have to figure this out. We have to help all of them, ours and these Alphas’, and everyone. Michael, we have to save everyone. We have to.”

“Shhh, little alpha,” Michael soothed as he unlocked their door and let them both in. “Make love to me, and let your worries go for tonight. You took care of me this afternoon. Let me take care of you now.” Behind him, Dean’s arms snaked around his waist. Dean’s lips fixed to Michael’s Mating-scar, kissing, then sucking, and Michael moaned, losing his own train of thought, just as he’d wanted to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, as always.
> 
> Before I go, as my grad school progress develops, I'm going to be building a website portfolio. The website is up, but right now, instead of technical communications samples, it's housing some of my short fiction and first-try blog posts. Visit me there if you feel inspired to: [Aoiler.com](https://www.aoiler.com/)
> 
> Love y'all. And y'all means all. 💖

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are life. Corrections are gold. Seriously, come chat with me.
> 
> For reference: [Character Keller Ratings by Melodina](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11244573/chapters/25132506%E2%80%9D%20rel=)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Precise and Accurate Retelling of One Little Nudge’s Crime and Punishment Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323204) by [Falka_tyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falka_tyan/pseuds/Falka_tyan)


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